Love Goes By Haps: Collected Prompts
by Masked Man 2
Summary: A collection of random prompts and pairings, because really, love can never be boxed neatly into a single category.
1. Touch: Rosencrantz X Guildenstern

**Author's Note: I am trash. I know this. So, a couple of days ago, I felt a sudden urge to write, and a friend of mine was like "you should write Shakespeare fluff." Because I'm perennially lacking in inspiration, I was like "sure," so I scoured my Pinterest looking for a prompt. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon this...I guess it was a 30-day OTP challenge? There were 30 prompts for either writing or drawing, and I was like "okay, I'll just pick my favorite Shakespearean couples and...go to town." Me being me, I tried to take the prompts seriously, but...some of them were just conducive to crack. Some of them were also really weird, so I changed them. XD**

 **Prompt number 1 was "holding hands." This takes place right at the beginning of** _ **Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead**_ **; all dialogue is taken verbatim from the script.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own any of the plays that I used:** _ **Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Twelfth Night, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew,**_ **and** _ **Cymbeline**_ **.**

Really, he couldn't see what all this fuss was about. Gambling had never driven men to murder- not in his recent memory, at least, though that seemed more full of holes than he'd have liked. Taking that unfortunate fact into consideration, however, changed nothing about their current situation; a man with a sieve for a brain could still say with utmost certainty that spinning coins was now, and had always been a simple _game_. No worthy matter for rage, or even philosophical debate...though Guildenstern could probably find matter for debate, philosophical or polemic or any other sort, at the bottom of a burlap sack. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, it wasn't as though this passage of funds between them was significant in any way. Sure, Rosencrantz was now eighty-five crowns richer, but he would share if his friend greatly needed the money. At the moment he could revel, however guiltily, in the pleasure of having bested said friend at _something_ : a pleasure too often denied him (though he could call to mind no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, to support that assertion).

So he reveled. Gloated, perhaps. Or else merely expressed a sentiment of honest shock, because really, the only noteworthy thing about this whole affair was the sheer _amount_ he had won. "Eighty-five in a row- beaten the record!" Which _was_ astonishing. In his mind, at least.

Not, it seemed, in Guildenstern's. "Don't be absurd," he muttered, voice dropping to the familiar tired monotone it adopted when he'd reached the limits of his (admittedly, far from infinite) patience.

Which meant, of course, that Rosencrantz would engage in his own private game of seeing how far _past_ those limits he could push his volatile companion without getting punched. Or strangled. Or kissed. Thus far only the last had yet to happen.

"Easily!" he retorted brightly, moving to sit beside the shorter man. Nudging him lightly with his shoulder. Taking care not to jingle the eighty-five glimmering additions to his purse too loudly.

Abruptly Guildenstern heaved himself to his feet, pacing as though the boundless energy ever coursing through his veins was coming to a boil, liquid fire burning beneath freckled skin. "Is that _it_ , then?" he bit out, teeth clenched, a snarl tearing raggedly at the edges of the words. "Is that all?"

" _What_?" This from the man so quick to call _him_ absurd?

"A new record? Is that as far as you are prepared to go?"

"Well-"

"No questions? Not even a pause?"

"You spun them yourself!" And he had done. Eighty-five times. He could have stopped at three, twenty-nine, thirty-two, but no, he'd chosen to keep going. To blast the record, which had been eighty-four the last time Rosencrantz had thought to contemplate it, and eighty-three the time before _that_ , stretching back to the lonely one- but that was beside the point. _The point was_ , Guildenstern was working himself into a frenzy over something he'd brought entirely on himself. Granted, that was nothing new, but he didn't even the decency to give in to a normal man's proclivity for self-pity under trying circumstances. How was injury to one's own pride _less_ of a bother than the incongruity of probability?

XXX

Guildenstern was watching him intently, a nearly predatory gleam sharpening the dull sage of his eyes. "Not a flicker of doubt?" he asked quietly, taking one slow step towards Rosencrantz. Like a hunter holding his prey in thrall, playing with it for no greater reason than pure instinct.

"Well, I won, didn't I?" he shot back, feeling a prickle of nervousness lodge itself in his throat: aggressive, insistent, so like anger that his conscious mind refused to deem it anything less.

A step. "And if you'd lost?" Another step, a kind of manic desperation thrumming through the words like the staccato'd beats of a war drum. "If they'd come down against you, eighty-five times, one after another, just like that?"

"Well…." It was a fair question. Not one he'd cared to think on overmuch in the wake of his streak of victory, but a fair question nevertheless. And, thankfully, one with a laughably simple answer. "Well, I'd have a good look at your coins for a start!"

"I'm relieved." The other man backed away as though tugged by an invisible string, thin lips curling into a bitter facsimile of a smile. "At least we can still count on self-interest as a predictable factor. I suppose it's the last to go." Shaking his head slightly, he breathed out a long sigh, barely louder than the whisper of a breeze. "Your capacity for trust made me wonder if perhaps...you, alone…." As suddenly as he'd retired, so too did he turn back, lips parted and damp, hands trembling, eyes wild. " _Touch_."

And Rosencrantz obliged, realizing worriedly that he'd pushed his friend too far, forgetting that realization the moment skin met skin. Guildenstern's palm was rough and fever-hot against his own, the pulse in his wrist fluttering frantically like the wings of a bird trapped in a prison of glass. It was with a child's fascination that he stared down at their joined hands: his own pale and smooth, long and elegant like a nobleman's; his friend's square and strong, calloused skin and ginger hairs burnt golden by the sun. One spinning and losing, the other casually picking up the pieces like they meant nothing, which couldn't be further from the truth- and in that moment Rosencrantz thought he'd like nothing better than to pull Guildenstern to him, to join lips as they did hands. But he couldn't. Because he was eighty-five crowns richer. Because he burned under the weight of a madman's gaze, pinned in place by eyes too hell-bent on seeking answers to embrace the question before him. Because he couldn't remember why he was here, why he clasped his friend's hand as tightly as if he were pulling him back from a cliff's edge, _why he WAS_ , and when the strength of a sinewy arm thrust against his own and sent him sprawling, he knew without knowing _why_ that they were doomed to orbit each other in limbo, touching hands but never more, dancing back from the edge but never leaving it behind, for eternity.

 **I like to be tricky with numbers: three for the number of leads in this play (Ros, Guil, the Player), twenty-nine and thirty-two for the respective ages of actors Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, who played Guildenstern and Rosencrantz in the 1990 film version of this play. I'd thought they were older at the time. Whoops.**

 **When we read this play in my Shakespeare class, I almost immediately fell in love with it, pronouncing it far superior to** _ **Hamlet**_ **, and one of my roommates, who was also in the class and with whom I read every play aloud, agreed with me. I honestly would love to act in this, as any of the three main characters. My university did it years ago, so...hopefully they bring it back.**

 **I don't know what happened to that ending. I was rushing to finish it before I left for karate. It...suffered as a result. XD**


	2. Adoremus: Olivia X Sebastian

**AN: Prompt #2 was "cuddling." I...took some liberties with it. Nothing new there.**

 **Now, I'm not really a religious person, so for obvious reasons I do not own the hymn** _ **Adoremus in aeternum**_ **. I just heard it in a Youtube mix and thought "this song is freaking beautiful, let's use it in the story." I also don't speak Latin, which is why, when I found the words, I started reading them aloud and realized I sounded like I was speaking Spanish.**

" _Adoremus in aeternum sanctissimum Sacramentum. Laudate Dominum omnes gentes: laudate eum omnes populi. Quoniam confirmata est super nos misericordia ejus: et veritas Domini manet in aeternum. Adoremus…._ "

The words of the old hymn came to her ears on the wings of angels and the birds of sunrise: bass, tenor, and treble, one voice leaping like quicksilver to give voice to Heaven's full chorus. Her fool, surely; it could be no other, though she had never thought him a religious man. The part of her soul that, in the wake of her father's and brother's deaths, had found such impossible comfort in the house of God yearned to join the man in song- and she would have, were it not for Sebastian's arm about her waist, holding her against his chest as though he feared she would desert him if he let his grip go slack.

Rolling gingerly over to face him, Olivia marveled at the ease with which her new husband slept. Well did her uncle name him Sebastian-born-of-stones; she thought that nothing save a stone thrown at his head would sway him from the path of dreams. Almost unconsciously, she brought a hand up to feel for the strong, unmetered heartbeat pulsing beneath skin warmed from summer sun and soft linen. In repose his features were relaxed, their sharpness rendered soft like worn marble by the dawn's honeyed light. A mere three years her junior, and he possessed the body of a youth still: the shoulders narrower, the muscles less defined than they would be on a man's body. For a moment she could convince herself that he was Cesario, the boy she had so cherished...but...no. Cesario was no more and _had never been_ , it was Sebastian who embraced her now, Sebastian whose gentle heat she sought as the plaintive notes of the hymn twined themselves around their recumbent forms.

There could be no mistaking the man for the mirage. But could she love the man? Adore him, even, as the fool's hymn bid her adore God? Not all love sprung from a moment's infatuation...and in the sanctuary of the morning's near-silence, she could believe it. Could believe in the power of time, to forge passion and the impetuous boldness of youth into a love less like the flash of fire and more like the glint of steel, enduring to cleave hardship and calamity in twain. A holy blade, a holy melody, woven from light and heat, breaths and bodies intertwined, the ghost of a song calling them to glory.

" _Gloria Patri et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto: Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Adoremus…._ "


	3. The Room: Iago X Roderigo

**AN: Okay, this one is complete and utter crack, written after midnight. The third prompt was "watching a movie," and after examining my DVD collection and deciding that Roderigo would never own any of those films, I was like "let's make them watch** _ **The Room**_ **!" Now, I've never actually seen the full thing, but I found a compilation of funny scenes and it was...well. Let's just say that quite a few of the reaction lines in this were taken verbatim from me. Just...without the Irish accent. I don't even know where that came from.**

 **I've never written anything without any narration whatsoever. It was frightening, but strangely liberating as well. Screenwriters have all my respect now, even more so than they did when I wrote my own screenplay.**

 **Lines from** _ **The Room**_ **are written in** _ **bold italics**_ **. I also stole a wee bit of headcanon from** _ **Dalmatian Rex's**_ **story "What Happened? What Did I Do?" over on .**

"No."

"But-"

"I said _no_."

"But it's a _good movie_!"

" _Roderigo_. You want t' talk good movies, show me _Prisoner of the Mountains._ Show me _Death and the Compass_ , show me fuckin' _Blade Runner_. Do _not_ show me-"

"I've never heard of any of those."

"...'Course you haven't. Fucking Philistine."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"It is when your idea of high art is the fuckin' _Room_."

"You swear too much."

"Never tell a soldier he swears too much."

"Why not?"

"'Cos he'll point yer wee moralizin' self in the direction of his sergeant an' tell ya "no, laddie, that bloke o'er there does one better 'n I do, talk 't him 'bout swearin'." And the sergeant'll whup your yellow arse flat an' cuss a blue streak fit t' kill yer oul mammy while doin' it."

"...But I thought you _were_ a sergeant...or...something."

"Exactly."

"..."

"..."

"WHY DID I INVITE YOU HERE I KNEW YOU WERE GONNA SCARE ME!"

"Why're you cryin' like a little bitch?!"

"I can still kick you out, you know!"

"Wouldn't do."

"Would!"

"I don' think so, puppy. You'd feel guilty 'bout sendin' yer mate out t' sleep on a park bench 'cos he'd get a steak knife up the arse if he went home before next day's noon and without dark chocolate caramels."

XXX

"'Ow the _fuck_ d'you not recognize your "favorite customer" when he's got fuckin' sunglasses on?!"

"There, see, I told you it was good! You wouldn't be insulting it if you didn't like it at least a little bit. And you get more Irish when you're into stuff."

"...Anyone ever told you you're smarter than y'look?"

"Uh...nope."

"Probably 'cos you're not."

"Hey!"

"Oi, hush now. Thought ya liked this movie. Don' wanna be missin' it, now, do ya?"

XXX

"Takin' drugs is a- oh, Christ."  
"Have you ever taken drugs by mistake, Iago?"

"No, I bloody well haven't. I knew exactly what they were when I took 'em."

XXX

"This guy's accent is shite, this acting's shite, Mark's fuckin' Lisa, an' Johnny Boy's a reg'lar amadan gone Bedlam way. 'S all anyone needs t' know."

"Wait, Mark's doing _what_?! Since _when?!_ '

"Who's seen this fifteen times, you or me, lad?!"

XXX

" _ **If a lotta people love each other, the world would be a better place to live!**_ "

"This guy is so deep, though! Tell me he's not right about that."

"Amadan gone Bedlam way. I'm standin' by that."

"You're a heartless, cruel bacterial organism. No wonder your wife kicks you out into the street on a monthly basis."

"...Say that again."

"...Heartless, cruel bacterial organism…?"

" _'Ow'd y' like this heartless fuckin' organism up your fuckin' ARSE, right-?!_ "

"AHH NO PLEASE I DIDN'T MEAN IT I WANT TO HAVE CHILDREN AHH HELP I NEED THAT REMOTE!"

XXX

" _ **You're tearing me APART, Lisa!**_ "

" _ **Why are you so**_ **hysterical** _ **?**_ "

"Why're _you_ so willing to indulge this guy's crap acting and fuckin' flat affect?"

XXX

 _ **"You can come out now. She's gone."**_

 _ **"In a few minutes, bitch."**_

 _ **"Who are you calling a bitch?"**_

 _ **"You and your stupid mother."**_

 __"HAHAHAHA THAT PART IS SO GOOD."

"..."

"Why aren't you laughing?"

"...Wasn't funny."

"...Emilia would kill you if you talked to her like that, wouldn't she?"

"Doubt it-"

"She totally would."

"..."

"Is that why she kicked you out this time?"

"...No. No, it's not."

"...Do you wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"Talking helps."

"Helps a sod like you, maybe. Prefer t' drown me sorrows."

"...Is _that_ why?"

"No reasonin' with her when she's on her-"

"EW GROSS NO DON'T SAY THE P-WORD OH GOD MY VIRGIN EARS."

"...This is why you're single."

 **Iago has great taste in movies, by the way. ...Well, okay, I personally haven't seen** _ **Blade Runner**_ **(I'm going to be reading it in the fall, I think), but I've heard it's good.**

 **THIS WAS CRACK FORGIVE ME SHAKESPEARE MUSE**


	4. Cuore: Romeo X Rosaline

**AN: Oh, Lordy, I forgot about this. ...Whoops. On the bright side, the semester's over, so I'll have a bit of time to write.**

 **The fourth prompt was "on a date," and I chose to base it off of my college theater club's production of** _ **Romeo and Juliet**_ **that we staged last fall. Romeo was cast as a girl, so the title couple was a lesbian couple, although all of the other girls in male roles (myself as Mercutio, along with some friends of mine as Benvolio, Tybalt, the Prince, and the Montague and Capulet ensembles) played them as male. I had FAR too much fun playing Mercutio, by the by. All appearances are taken from those of their actors; since we had no one "playing" Rosaline, I used our director.**

 **Disclaimer: THIS SHIT AIN'T MINE.**

Her hair drew Romeo's eye first: not for its color (an unremarkable brown), but for its length. Rosaline Galinarion wore her hair cropped like a man's, the gentle waves brushing the sides of her throat but stopping shy of her rounded shoulders, and though Romeo knew that could have meant any number of things, her mind remained fixed on the disparate images of soft white skin, wide hips, generous curves, a man's hair and arrogant eyes- and insisted, over and over till she felt the refrain would drive her mad, _here, at last, is a woman of my kind_.

What a joyous thing 'twas, to espy a kindred spirit! Though the young men she held so dear as friends were more than suitably tolerant of her propersnity (or proclivity) for pursuing women, she was not made for masculine company, not constantly. In these hot days, when the fighters and banterers had worn themselves to quietude, she found herself longing for more...delicate companionship. Rosaline's companionship.

" _Mio cuore_ , you gaze as though your spirit took the form of Leander, fixing all hope upon a point too far beyond hellish waves t'attain without peril." Mercutio's lilting voice wound itself firmly about her ear as his hands came to rest on her shoulders; despite herself, Romeo jumped. She had thought him by the fountain still, carousing as was his wont. "Whatever else she be, this nymph that hath ensnared your eye, let her at _least_ be my equal or better in height. I will not have the bow-boy's butt-shaft pin you so low to th' ground that love passes you by to leave you trampled beneath its trailing, pitiless wings."

"Talk sense, I prithee," she retorted, habitual cheerfulness dimming as the passing Rosaline threw a contemptuous glance their way.

"What amusement ever came of sense?" But surely Mercutio, too, must have sensed her lady's coollness, for his hands on her shoulders tightened; she felt the pique of his interest like a knife against her neck. "Is it she, then? Your Hero?"

"Ay," she sighed. She could only pray she sounded not so dreamy as she felt. Wondered briefly why it had to have been Mercutio, ever the cynic, to find her in the throes of longing when she had given him such great fodder for mockery. "Methinks she is the fairest creature yet to grace my eye-"

"So say you of them all-"

"Do you not think so?"

The weight of his skepticism lay heavily across her back, like some living thing breathing censure with its sighs. "Nay, lass, I have seen the cold and distant stars look more favorably upon man than your lady fair, stars who winked back not with daggers of ice but with a firm and tender regard." Silence. Something she knew (or thought she knew) he could not abide. "Woo her, then, an you desire it so." His voice dropped to a whisper, bitter and grim. "If she prove cruel, lay not the blame on me."

XXX

Rosaline had stopped at the cloth merchant's stall, resolutely ignoring the plump woman's ramblings as she ran her fingers over bolts of velvet, linen, wool. Romeo quickly ran her tongue over dry lips, trying to muster up the courage to approach her. To place a hand over hers, charm her with a jest or a smile. Lead her to the fountain, while the daylight hours away in conversation, take her by the hand and hair beneath the setting sun's fire, let lips do what hands do and join- _nay. Enough_. What use was dreaming when the lady herself stood there, primed for the fulfilment of desire?

"Have your feet grown roots, that you stand by so dizzy-eyed? Or is such oddity a custom of yours?"

It was a strong voice, and clear, the sort that belonged upon a stage. The step of Romeo's heart quickened immediately, yearning to beat time to the melody of that wondrous voice. "Only when mine eyes light upon beauty such as yours, lady, will my feet hold fast to please them."

"Clever words," she said, a small smile curling over her lips. "And you speak them without fear? To one of your own sex? God will not look kindly upon such a transgression."

"Let me burn, then!" Romeo threw her arms wide, trying desperately to imitate Mercutio's expansive physicality, his wide, self-effacing grin that charmed man and maid alike. "I am in torment already, lady, to be within arms' length of a kinder divinity. For eyes to see what hands may not hold is a Hell unto itself."

Rosaline laughed, equal parts startled and pleased. "And by whose decree has the holding of hands been forbidden? Our prince decries war, not love. You have proven already your lack of regard for public censure and Hellfire both. Shall you deny so mean a desire on so much _proof_?"

"I think not-"

"Then be forward, I pray; your heart obviously wills it so. I would see it done."

 **I quoted the "bow-boy's butt-shaft" line because it was cut from our production; a lot of the weirder banter between Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio was, much to my disappointment (I really wanted to rant about geese and Rosaline's flabby thighs, dammit).**

 **Um...so, yeah, I left this untouched for...several months. And yes, the prompt was "on a date," and I got lazy and decided to make it "the leadup to a date." I take liberties. Don't judge.**


	5. Advantage Thee More: Malvolio X Feste

**AN: Still late. I wrote this on a plane. Reading my original manuscript was a trip.**

 **The fifth prompt was "kissing," and I've wanted to write the "cut scene" of Malvolio writing his letter to Olivia for awhile, so I thought "why not"? I love me some antagonistic pairings as much as anyone.**

 **Anyway, enough prattling. I don't own** _ **Twelfth Night**_ **, etc. I'm also out of practice writing, so forgive me if this is ass.**

 _I am gone, sir, and anon, sir, I'll be with you again. In a trice, like to the old vice, your need to sustain. Who with dagger of lath in his rage and in his wrath, cries 'a-ha' to the Devil…._ The words of the fool's song rang in Malvolio's ears long after the cellar door had slammed shut: teasing him, haunting him. A trickster's promise of liberty- for how could he be freed from _nothing_ , that most fatal and final of prisons?

His wrists burned where the splintered rope bit into tender skin; his arms, lashed behind his back, had long since gone numb, but beyond those physical hurts there was nothing in this place save the constant, oppressive darkness. The song in his mind was faint, a mere whisper threading its way through the silence. A small part of him whose fancy grew evermore inclined to roam with the unmarked passage of time wondered if this was what Purgatory felt like: this stillness, the total absence of movement, sound, life. This blackness, so complete that only the phantom figures of one's fevered imagination could be made out within. Nothing to fill the interminable seconds, minutes, hours, but thought: too much of it, until the charge of madness he'd been so painfully branded with seemed not only deserved, but welcome, if the madman's mind was the blank his outward seeming hinted at. _Like a mad lad, pare thy nails, Dad- adieu, goodman Devil…._

"And the Lord said…." The creak of the door startled him more than it had any right to, but no matter how strongly he berated himself for it, his heart raced, brought forcibly back to life by hope too sudden and too strong. "Let there be light. Or some such thing. I dare not speak for you, sir, but I care little for particulars when the end result is so...illuminating. Shall we say."

"We shan't." Malvolio exhaled shakily, letting his head fall to his knees and refusing to acknowledge the relief coursing through his veins upon hearing the fool's voice. "I should have to stoop far lower than I am now before I deigned to acquiesce to a fool's mockery of sense."

" _Acquiesce_ to his _mockery_ of _sense_?" Trust him to place more stock in wordplay than in action. "Quite the wordsmith you are, sir, when you put your mind to it."

Quiet footsteps approached the windowless chamber, paused before the door. Though he knew it to be a fruitless effort while he was thus bound, he still twisted, craned his neck, hungering after the promised light with the desperation of a man starved. The oppressive hope burning in his chest was a more painful burden than any rope or shackle.

The key screeched against the rusted lock, the sound a grating agony against ears too long accustomed to silence. Malvolio waited with bated breath as the heavy door groaned open; he felt as though he were being liberated from a tomb- wondered, for one delirious moment, whether the poor fool would enter the cell to be met with a corpse, the soul of the living man within fled long ago to some other where bright and mad...but of course, that was ridiculous. Surely.

XXX

And then. _Light_. A restless, solitary flame pricking at his eyes: teasing, blinding even as it blessed. He felt weak with even this small assault on his senses; gold pervaded black, and the world retaking form before him seemed both beautiful and monstrous to behold. Even the fool fell prey to the paradox- at a first glance the small, disheveled vagabond of truth; at a second Apollo, harbinger of music and light, a figure grand enough for legend. He knew it to be senseless, mere delusion, but he felt overwhelmed, torn as he was from the deprivation that had been his whole world these long hours past, and he could not help but cower- undignified, skulking, like some filthy cave-dwelling animal- against the chilled stone wall.

"Are you come indeed?" he rasped. "I will abide no more tricks from you, cur-"

"Do I not stand before you, sir, plain as anything?" The fool moved about the cell with a studied fecklessness that the tension in his narrow shoulders belied, setting the candle in one corner before moving toward Malvolio, pen, inkwell, and a scrap of parchment clasped loosely in one hand. "I made you a promise. A fool's golden honor, if you like. That's not so lightly done."

"And next, I avow, you will tell me to place greater trust in those obliged to obey me when you yourself have given me the most reason to doubt such blind faith."

"A promise," he said peaceably, "of compassion. Not of servitude. The two are as much alike as we- which is to say, diametrically opposed."

"If you were truly _compassionate_ ," Malvolio hissed, "you would cut these infernal bonds post-haste rather than prattling on as is your wont! I've neither payment nor gratitude for wit-"

"As is _your_ wont" But the fool stayed mercifully silent thereafter, pulling a small, vicious-looking dagger from his trouser pocket and sawing clumsily at the tightly wound ropes. The moment they gave way Malvolio felt all breath leave his body; he slumped forward bonelessly, and only the other man's wiry arms about his body kept him from striking the floor face-first. "Steady, sir. The pain will pass."

 _If_ it would, it certainly did not seem willing to do so with any semblance of alacrity. Blood rushed back down his arms with a vengeance, and he found himself fighting to stave off tears at the sensation of a thousand burning needles attempting to bore through his skin from the inside out. Bereft now of the fool's rough embrace, he writhed upon the grimy floor ungrounded, like a pitiful dying thing.

His hands, he realized dimly, would be useless to him; he could scarcely move them, let alone write. Had he waited so long for his pass to salvation, to be so cruelly denied?

"Fool," he growled, teeth clenched as nerves and pride together rebelled. Whatever ill he spoke of the man's character and profession, that he was learned was indisputable. And, therefore, indispensable. "If you have a fair hand to write, you will do me one more service. You've delayed my lady's learning of the injustice she has incurred upon me long enough."

"'Twas not my intent to dally. Believe me or no." He had the decency, at least, to appear contrite. "There were others needed placating."

"I care not for _others_."

"Your eternal misfortune, I presume-"

"You presume too much, surely they could have waited till morning." For the moment Malvolio chose to ignore the jibe. A simple enough thing when the message had more than once been directed his way by others whose opinions he valued far more. In any case he knew, or could hazard a well-aimed guess, that Toby had been the one to keep the fool from his purpose, but he could not make his displeasure known to the drunken lout when said lout was safely ensconced within his bottle, his unholy virgin Mary, or his bed, blissfully free of remorse. The thought rankled.

"Yet our lady, sir, must also wait till morning; she of us all in this house has sense enough to sleep at night." The fool dragged one hand briskly over his eyes as he sat, dipped the pen into the ink, scratched faint lines onto the paper. For a moment he seemed years older than he was, pale and frayed in the flickering light.

This dalliance was not to be tolerated, he was sure. Yet Malvolio could not quite bring himself to summon the necessary vitriol to make that known. They were both weary. Only reconciliation could arise from that deplorable state, and in his suffering he relished in even this small companionship. "Your wit is somewhat lacking this night."

"I put it up by night, that it may better favor the ill-favored when the light be favorable enough to see them by."

He snorted, almost amused despite himself. "A lame jest, sirrah. Nearly as lame as your _golden honor_."

"You are a man of means and matter, sir, surely you must know fool's gold is worthless," he said, all false innocence, but his eyes flitted restlessly between the steward and the paper, the glow of mirth in them slowly dimming. "I confess, I did not think you so patient as to bandy words with your missive still unwritten."

There was that. Frankly, his anachronistic indulgence surprised him just as much, but for all the fool's talk of worthless honor, he had done more than was required of him already; he might _bandy words_ into oblivion, but he would not break them. Was it so wrong of him, to protract his return to solitude, to silence, for as long as he could?

"Then write," Malvolio sighed, dropping his chin to his chest in defeat and trying, gingerly, to massage feeling back into his hands.

A faint nod. Another series of lines etched into the parchment. "What say?"

What say, indeed. Malvolio closed his eyes, reaching through the fog of pain and humiliation to the ubiquitous lingering image of Olivia's face: the gentle fall of her wheat-colored hair, her porcelain pallor, the anxious arch of her brows. Her rose-red lips, parted in consternation; her cool slate eyes, bright with grief and the vague fear of a madman in yellow stockings, prancing like a demon before her wretched innocence.

"By the Lord, madam, you have wronged me, and the world shall know it."

XXX

On and on he spoke, more fervently with each passing word as he lent voice to the rage, terror, and doubt that had torn through him since he'd first set eyes on that damned letter. He felt drained when he'd finished. There was no feeling left in him, no life; he could scarce forbear keeping his eyes from falling shut as he attempted to regain what little composure he still possessed. In any case the fool had seen it all, in all its inglorious detail: _madly used Malvolio_ , he was in truth. Let Olivia read it, take pity on him, free him. Return all to the way it had been ere whatever callous gods governed Toby and his ilk turned their vengeful eyes his way. He could- _would_ \- remain no longer in darkness.

The fool's silent presence left no heavy taint on the stale air, and Malvolio had nearly forgotten he remained in the chamber still until he felt the damned ropes encircle his wrists once more. He twisted violently, panicked, flailing his elbows out to strike his arms, chest, whatever he could reach, but his arms were pinned to his side in seconds. Breathing hard, he turned to glare at the smaller man, betrayal clawing up his throat like bile. Troubled gray eyes gazed back at him, dark with a storm of feeling he dared not name.

"You would love to see me whipped as my kind deserve, I'm sure," he said quietly, "but I'm not so weary of my life that I'd see it out over you. Would to God I'd have no reason to take your liberty from you. But. Should these others come down to find you thus freed, it will not be you they elect to punish."

He could have screamed. Cursed. But he lacked the will to do little more than beg. "Please," Malvolio whispered, even as the ropes tightened, grated- nothing so constricting as the first time, but the pain of renewed bondage in any form overtook any semblance of appreciation he might have dredged up.

The fool said nothing for a long while; merely studied him, sharp face shadowed and unreadable. The candle had nearly burnt itself out, and with the encroaching darkness came the weariness, the melancholy, the old despair. The sensation of suffocation it wrought was nearly familiar by now, yet the tears, so long buried, slipped from his eyes unbidden.

Only the gentle brush of chapped lips and the rasp of stubbled beard against his cheeks brought him back to himself. His eyes flew open. His mind whirled, thoughts staggering with shock as they tried to join together in something approaching a sensible manner- yet there _was_ no sense to be found, how could there be? How could the fool _kiss_ him, even as he willingly condemned him, again, to the suffering he'd been so gloriously relieved of for these precious minutes? How could he feel not rage, but gratitude, _desire_ , for the man he'd so long professed to despise, who had done him that day's sole kindness despite it all?

Malvolio tilted his head impatiently, succumbing wholly to the irrationality of the moment, and captured the fool's lips with his own. His bound hands flexed, yearning to bury themselves in the thick auburn curls tickling the sides of his face- to possess, to hurt as he had been hurt, mingling pain and pleasure to match the entirety of the day and night's madness. So he bit down instead, reveling in the metallic tang of blood as the fool's thin fingers, tangled in his own unbound hair, tensed convulsively against his scalp. There was no affection in this kiss, no tenderness. Only the thrumming energy of their shared agitation, their longing, their tired fear.

Passion spent, they remained connected: Malvolio gasping, dazed; the fool subdued, resting his head upon the steward's shoulder. No words passed between them. What they might have said, they instead spoke in silence, silence floating weightless and dizzy in the close dark. The scent of burnt wax surrounded them. It clung to every corner of the cell, stinking of false love and extinguished hope. Resignation and exhaustion weighed him down, beckoning him toward the unquiet sleep of the damned. The fool sighed deeply as he stood: gathering paper and candle and ink, not daring to break that tenuous silence. As Malvolio fell further into unconsciousness he felt those lips upon his brow once more. The final sense of companionship before the lonely cold of morning. A promise of compassion, perhaps, so he'd said. A kiss of deliverance. In the whispering darkness he nearly believed it.

 **BOOM. DONE. It SUCKS ARSE, but it's done. Enjoy?**


	6. April Fools: Twins X Orsino X Olivia

**AN: Whaddaya know, I actually didn't take three months to write the next chapter. Not sure how I wound up having two** _ **Twelfth Night**_ **chapters in a row, but...oh, well.**

 **This is CRACK. I really wasn't sure how else to write it and I found Sebastian's voice to be kind of conducive to crack. Also, modern college-ish AU, because I didn't feel like researching the history of April Fool's Day. For some reason whenever I write a modern AU of Shakespeare everyone ends up sounding British. ...Okay, Feste, Maria, and Viola (to some extent) sound British.**

 **Some inspiration taken from Aja's wonderful story "So Full of Shapes is Fancy" over on Ao3, although their plot was a great deal more sophisticated than mine. Warning for much Olivia-bashing; I couldn't resist.**

 **Disclaimer: Don't own** _ **Twelfth Night**_ **, etc. I also don't own** _ **As You Like It**_ **and** _ **King Lear**_ **, although the fools (Touchstone and the unnamed Fool) from those plays make cameos.**

"Sebastian, c'mon, it'll be so funny."

"No, I really don't think it will be!" The younger twin launched himself off the bed with an indignant huff, raking both hands through his hair as he shot his sister and her idiot musician friend a baleful glare. "You're telling me my girlfriend- whom I _adore_ , by the way- is a- a-"

"Politically incorrect selective lesbian?" Feste didn't look up from the strings of Viola's guitar, but Sebastian could practically sense the smirk dancing over his lips. Infuriating twat. "Sorry, mate, but she doesn't exactly keep it secret. Can't tell you how many times she's come whinging to me going 'I want a _man_ , or no man at all!'" The imitation was more disconcerting for its content than its uncanny accuracy.

"What the _hell_ is that supposed to mean," Sebastian growled.

Viola, head buried in her closet, leaned out to eye him up appraisingly. "No offense, Seb, but you're not exactly the poster child for raw masculinity. My muscles are as good as yours and I only had to work three months to get them."

"She's right, you are a bit scrawny."

"You- shut up!" Defeated, he flopped to the floor, throwing an arm over his eyes and groaning loudly. And _fine_ , maybe he was being melodramatic, but here were his sister and her best friend telling him that his girlfriend harbored poorly hidden lesbian fantasies _of said identical twin sister_ , fuck you very much. He had more than a meager right to mope. "I just don't see what I'd be getting out of this."

"Your one shot at being a drag queen and the best gay sex of your life," Feste quipped cheekily, ducking to avoid the tennis shoe Viola hurled at his head. "OI. Am I wrong?"

"I mean, no, but you're not helping." With a quiet sigh, she moved to sit beside her brother, idly doodling vines onto his arm with one of the many colored pens she kept in her jacket pocket. "Look, you have to admit that what we pulled over Christmas was the best prank of our lives. Messing about with a little leeway won't kill Orsino and Olivia, we all know they've got their, ah-"

"Proclivities?"

"What did I say about not helping?"

"That I was a fair hand at-"

"Right, exactly. So shut your gob."

"Right."

"What does it matter if it was a good prank, Vi, it's not like any of it was my idea!" Sebastian groused. "It still changes nothing. Olivia will think you're me, well, that's not going to make her fall in love with _me._ "

Viola had enough decency to look uncomfortable. "At least you'll know. It can be your last big 'fuck you' to her."

"I'm not breaking up with her!"

"Why not? Because you love her? Because you're still holding out hope that after three months she'll suddenly change her mind and love you back?" She shook her head, exasperated. "You two are impossible."

"Did you forget she only went for me because she thought I was you- well, Cesario-you? Some fucking gorgeous university girl fucking throws herself at me, I'm not exactly going to say no! It's not my fault I don't _measure up_ to some...unknown fucking _standard_ , or am packing the wrong _equipment_!" Feeling weariness wash over him like the numbing cold of January waves, he pulled himself off the ground, pushing Viola's concerned hand off of his arm as he buried his face in his arms.

"If I may interject." Feste set the guitar aside, letting his hands dangle loosely between his knees. He met Sebastian's angry gaze unflinchingly. "Say you do this switch, say- speaking purely in the hypothetical, 'course- Olivia does sleep with Viola. Has a fantastic time, proves herself to be the bitch (not butch) everyone's suspected her of being for years, whatever. No matter what happens you'll have the higher moral ground. That gay sex lark? I was takin' the piss. Forget it. Orsino wouldn't cheat on Viola with you; he'll strip you down, take one look below the belt, start laughin'."

"Look, if you're gonna insult me, you can just shut your goddamn mouth-"

"Hear me out. All I'm saying is, for once in his life he's on a streak of faith." Aggrieved, he dropped his chin onto his hands. Biting one ragged thumbnail, he raised an eyebrow at Viola with exaggerated slowness. "Back me up, yeah?"

"Yeah," she murmured, eyes lighting up. "Orsino wouldn't dare, but if Olivia _would_ -"

"You've got yourself an answer. Test of her love, innit? She comes up short? 'Sorry, luv, out the bin bag wi' yer trash act.'" Feste grinned roguishly, the gap in his white teeth seeming to wink as he tapped his fingers restlessly on his knees. "Ring up that Antonio bloke wot's always hanging 'round like your bloody shadow. Make his day, get your ego back. Not the worst reason to dissemble in the dress."

On the one hand, none of that was expressly _wrong_. Mending his best friend's potentially broken heart and finally feeling both desired and desirable after three months of being weighed, measured, and found wanting sounded more like Heaven than he'd care to admit. On the other hand, he truly did love Olivia- she was beautiful, graceful, whip-smart, thrillingly dominant, not to mention beautiful...vain. Proud. Cold. Better at making him feel like a child worthy of scolding than his own mother, and that had stopped being kinky the third time he'd jokingly called her "hot mama" and she'd slapped him for it. And he had to admit he was bloody sick of the blue balls her constant moods and school-related (or repressed-homosexual-desire-related) stress left him with. Maybe...maybe it was time for a change.

"All right. Let's do it."

XXX

"You're lucky your sister kept her hair short. Or you grew yours long, whichever; I don't really know and I don't really care. Makes my job a hell of a lot easier either way." Olivia's friend Maria pursed her lips as she stepped back to scrutinize Sebastian's half-made-up face. He sighed, more than a little disgruntled. He would never admit aloud that he was starting to regret his decision, but the regret process was already well underway. The various brushes and pencils attacking his face probably had something to do with it, to say nothing of the freshly waxed _everything_. The sports bra stuffed with fuzzy socks didn't even bear thinking about.

"Remind me why I'm doing this again."

"Because your sister, God love her, is adorably insane, and Olivia, though _I_ love _her_ , is adorably a bitch. To you, anyway. Can't say you're the greatest catch, myself-"

"Hey!"

"But she could at least have the decency to admit she made a mistake 'stead of carrying on about how she's trying so damn hard to make it work when we both know that isn't true." Maria tutted at his pout, putting some finishing touch only she could see to his contouring before nodding, permitting herself a satisfied grin. The reflection of her gleaming eyes in the hand mirror beckoned, a pint-sized Scots siren. "There. What do you think?"

He looked like Viola, was what he thought. Seeing someone else's face gazing back at you in a mirror was incredibly disconcerting. With his sister's makeup, his hair styled in her signature braided half-ponytail, and the corset and bra distorting his figure into a half-ass hourglass, he could scarcely recognize himself. All misgivings aside, he couldn't deny that Maria had done an impressive job; telling her so, she beamed, a blush staining her round cheeks as she ducked into Viola's closet, tossing out a lace dress of seafoam green, a braided leather belt, cowboy boots.

"Right, on with those. You're gonna look so cute. Your sister's got style."

"Rude. My style is great."

"Your _style_ , boyo, is schoolboy dress shorts with those fucking weird printed button-downs. That's bloody all I've ever seen you wear, you look like a stereotypical Tumblr hipster. Feste's probably having a field day right now." She pulled out her phone; opened her messages, giggled in a manner both sadistic and undignified. Viola, in the photo, was sitting on Sebastian's desk with her legs spread wide, leveling a brooding glower at the camera. Feste had put her in a black shirt with white polka dots, scarlet shorts, black socks patterned with tacos and chilis, white Converse, a gray beanie: scruffed her hair, removed her makeup, bound her chest. She looked ridiculous. And exactly like Sebastian.

"Hm."

"Told ya. Now be a good little hipster and go _change_."

He had long since resigned himself to the fact that Viola would always be the more attractive of the two of them, in personality as well as looks. In a way it was gratifying to be wearing her face and clothes, to be the looker for once in their shared eighteen years. Even a little exhilarating- weird, but exhilarating nevertheless. Maria, bright with laughter, made him pose in the windowsill: legs crossed, hands clasped on his lap, smiling serenely into the afternoon sun. She laughed harder a minute after she'd sent the photo, when Viola stole Feste's phone to say he looked like a country album covered and pronounced phase one a rousing success.

XXX

The triple date had been Toby's idea; all of the more questionable ideas generally were. Maria moonlighted as a hostess at the restaurant they'd chosen, and Feste's band was providing the live entertainment. Frankly, Sebastian wasn't sure he wanted to know who'd finagled that dubious stroke of luck. At least they got discounts.

"A toast!" Toby had been drinking since God-knew-when in the afternoon and walked in happily plastered, one arm slung around Maria's shoulders, the other waving a half-empty can of lager over his head. The band immediately launched into a lively cover of "Seven Drunken Nights," garnering some whoops and mocking applause from the other patrons. Olivia buried her face in her hands; Viola-as-Sebastian looked about as embarrassed and irritated as the real Sebastian felt. He knew she was travailing not to laugh. Her good humor was more difficult to emulate than to deduce. "A toast, to this unseasonably warm April Fools' Day on which it was supposed to snow, to the band of fools calling themselves No Man's Fool- you're _welcome_ , by the way, 'cos I know you're playing that for me, sodding _sots_ \- and to...eh...AH, to the most beautiful girlfriend I've ever had-"

"The only girlfriend you've ever had," Maria muttered slapping his arse affectionately. Or maliciously. It was hard to tell with her.

Toby's frown nearly brought him cross-eyed. "... _Yes._ That's true." The gloom disappeared from his features as quickly as it had overtaken them; shrugging, he swung Maria in a circle that nearly toppled them both. " _However._ A toast to her nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, and to my even more beautiful cousin! May the gracious gods above grant her happiness with one crazy twin, this rich bastard happiness with the other one, my girl happiness with me, and me another damn beer!" The can was flung into the air amidst raucous laughter; the drummer, Touchstone, caught it with a cheer. When Toby dipped Maria into a kiss, the applause ringing out was genuine.

 _Hell with this._ If he was going to be Viola for the night, by God, he would do her justice- and that meant impulsivity. Exuberance. Abandon. It meant laughing her high, carefree laugh, head tossed back in glee; it meant quirking an ironic eyebrow at Orsino and pulling him down by the collar for an impromptu snog. The taller man's brown eyes sparkled; Sebastian could feel his wide grin against his own lips, an unfamiliar and not altogether unpleasant sensation. Viola stared at them for a long moment, shocked, before moving to give Olivia the same treatment, rather more spontaneously than Sebastian himself might've done. If the look of raw hunger on her face was anything to go by, she was enjoying it immensely.

Dinner went surprisingly well, considering the oddity of the whole scheme. Neither Orsino nor Olivia seemed aware that anything was amiss (which was, of course, the important thing), and his sister's boyfriend was a far more tolerable date than Sebastian had ever given him credit for. He didn't focus on him to the exclusion of everyone else: something Sebastian knew he himself was guilty of but despised in others. He simply kept a warm hand on his knee as he deftly conversed with the entire party, a casual and unspoken protection. Spontaneous kisses on the cheek or lips were common. So were the jokes- some stupid, some offensive, some genuinely funny, all delivered with a bravado that was somehow cocky and self-effacingly charming all at once. Sebastian knew his own wit was no match for Viola's, but it was far easier to play at being clever when one's partner was so willing to reciprocate the attempted levity. He was pulled onto the dance floor the moment the band switched into a series of slower songs. Love songs, mostly, equal parts sweetly romantic and darkly tragicomic in Feste's signature style; Sebastian was certain he saw the man wink at him as Orsino let his broad hands glide over his waist, settling reverently at his hips. Granted, he had every right to be cheeky; he wasn't the one with long fingers ghosting over his arse, head thrown back and lips parted like some bloody sex-starved chav. Which Viola certainly wasn't, but he _was_ , dammit- sex-starved, not a chav- and the disguise was liberation incarnate. Viola herself was making Olivia the sole object of her considerable flirting prowess, apparently to great effect. It was embarrassing, really: how much better she was than he at Things Romantic. More so that she could charm his girlfriend effortlessly in a way he'd tried and failed time and again to do. Surely Olivia would have noticed that her boyfriend, without warning, had gained ten levels in charisma; surely she should have expressed more shock, at least initially. She wasn't that oblivious.

He couldn't bear to think that she _had_ seen through the ruse and simply didn't care.

XXX

Touchstone prided himself on knowing a great many things. Ask anyone but Feste, Hamo, and Iacopo and they'd tell you his musical skill was unparalleled, his insight into human nature fit to rival a psychologist's, his jokes superb. And a salacious pervert with no respect for boundaries and an unfortunate proclivity for saying whatever the hell popped into his head whenever the fancy took him, but...well. He couldn't be perfect. He had enough of an ego problem as it was.

What he did not know, however, was the story behind the lovely farce playing itself out on the dance floor below them. All he knew was that the skinny girl grinding against the tall bloke like he was the best and last shag of her life was no true girl. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He had no problem with twinks- was one, when the mood took him. But he did have a problem when said twink looked exactly like young Mr. Broody with the blonde, who had become Mr. Sexy Salsa, and in any case was actually a Miss. Was actually _Viola_ , the plucky bint with the sweet voice Feste had brought round to their practices once or twice, and wasn't that just a devil of a conundrum. Because she was taken. And straight. Or so he'd assumed, and his sense of these things was usually pretty good, thanks very much. So whatever the hell she was doing dressed as a boy, and the boy stunt double doing dressed as her, he couldn't begin to say.

Feste knew. Of that he had no doubt. It was written in the greenish glint to his chameleon eyes, the slight upward cant to his lips that bespoke mischief, a scheme coming to fruition. And whatever scheme this was, the buxom Maria, his favorite saucy wench save the one he himself had boarded, was in on it, too- cheeky thing kept sneaking hungry glances at the couples in question, paying only half a mind to the likely lovely things her Toby was doing to her tits and other bits. Shame. For both her sexual pleasure and his own amusement. He so enjoyed being in on things.

Though when Mr. Tall and the double disappeared into the bathroom five minutes later, and said Tall came stumbling back out howling, tears of laughter streaming down his face as he struggled to do up his flies with the double, now titless and clutching a crumpled pair of socks in his hands, following abashedly behind, he thought he could make a pretty good guess.

 **I bullshitted that ending. I don't care. It was getting too bloody long. It's still trash. XD**

 **I had an inkling of a headcanon that the four official artificial fools of Shakespeare's canon (the ones I know of, anyway)- Feste, Touchstone (** _ **As You Like It**_ **), Lear's Fool, (** _ **King Lear**_ **), and the Clown from** _ **Othello**_ **(technically a bit part, but that fool is no natural) would make a great band, so...they became one. Mostly I switched POV at the end because I got completely stuck and had no idea how to bring this to a close without making it twice as long as it was.**


	7. Volta: Benedick X Beatrice

**AN: Prompt 7 was "cosplaying," and I immediately thought of the fantastic masquerade scene in** _ **Much Ado About Nothing**_ **(WHICH I DO NOT OWN), where much confusion and mistaken identity and sass ensues. I focused on a small scene between a disguised Beatrice and Benedick occurring in the first half of the scene (AKA the "nobody really knows who anyone else is, or is pretending not to know, or is pretending the other person doesn't know" half). The actual fic portion is lacking, because I thought this prompt lent itself better to drawing.**

 **FADE IN:**

 **EXT. NIGHT: COURTYARD OF LEONATO'S ESTATE**

 _ **The large courtyard, ringed with torches that flicker proudly in defiance of the shadows of the surrounding fields and hills, houses a riotous frolic. The gaily swirling figures are splendidly gowned, robed, and masked- master and man together converse and dance to the lively music.**_

 _ **A man and a woman, hands clasped, break away from the ring of Volta dancers and make their way quickly to the forefront of the scene. The man, masked as a**_ **Pantalone** _ **, wears a short black cloak in the Spanish style, hood up. This is**_ **BENEDICK** _ **, disguised. The woman,**_ **BEATRICE** _ **, wears the mask of**_ **Columbina** _ **, but a thick shock of auburn curls, arranged with mock artfulness over one bare shoulder, makes her identity plain. Her lips, visible beneath the gilded mask, are curled into a wide grin.**_

 **BEATRICE**

 **(Laughingly)**

Will you not tell me you told you so?

 **BENEDICK**

 **(In a deep, warm voice, with an untraceable (feigned) foreign accent)**

No, you shall pardon me.

 **BEATRICE**

Nor will you not tell me who you are?

 **BENEDICK**

 **(Shakes his head; a smirk is evident in his voice)**

Not now.

 **BEATRICE** _ **releases her grip on Benedick's arm to place her hands on her hips, shaking her head slowly, bemusedly. A note of affront creeps into her voice.**_

 **BEATRICE**

That I was _disdainful_ , and that I had my good wit out of the 'Hundred Merry Tales'- _**(blows out a gusty sigh)**_ well this was Signior Benedick that said so!

 **BENEDICK**

 **(Fighting to remain casual)**

What's he?

 **BEATRICE**

 **(A little surprised)**

I am sure you know him well enough.

 **BENEDICK**

Not I, believe me.

 **BEATRICE**

Did he never make you laugh?

 **BENEDICK**

 **(With a trace of fond impatience)**

I pray you, what is he?

 **BEATRICE**

 **(Airily, drawing BENEDICK close to her in a confiding manner)**

Why, he is the Prince's jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines delight in him, and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy, for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. _**(Scans the crowd)**_ I am sure he is in the fleet… _ **(chuckles lowly, nudging**_ **BENEDICK** _ **with no small salaciousness)**_ I would he had boarded me.

 **BENEDICK**

 **(Choking slightly, making a concentrated effort to cover it with a cough)**

W-when I know the gentleman, I'll- tell him what you saw.

 **BEATRICE**

 **(Leaning against BENEDICK'S side, laughing; BENEDICK stiffens almost imperceptibly)**

Do, do! He'll but break a comparison or two on me- which, peradventure not marked nor laughed at strikes him into melancholy, and then there's a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night.

 _ **The Volta, which has been continuing in the scene's background, ends with raucous applause. The**_ **MUSICIANS** _ **begin a Pavane, which Beatrice listens to longingly for a moment before grabbing**_ **BENEDICK'S** _ **hand and tugging him back towards the ring**_ **.**

 **BEATRICE**

We must follow the leaders.

 **BENEDICK**

 **(Subdued, disconsolate)**

In every good thing.

 **FADE TO BLACK**

 **I decided to write out the scene screenplay style because, well, I like it. I want more practice screenwriting. And yes, I'm aware that my drawing of Benedick left out his lovely cape. I finished it (and I SUCK at using charcoals, which is why this isn't my best work; I wanted more practice with those, too) and then realized I hadn't done enough to disguise him. At that point I didn't really feel like changing it.**


	8. Spirits of Mirth: Viola X Feste

**AN: Prompt 8 was "shopping," and I was originally going to do some prom thing, but the lovely guest reviewer Natitoonfan21 on Ao3 was adamant that I get around to writing some Viola/Feste, so I adapted a fragment of a story I'd started MONTHS ago into a crap chapter for y'all. Yes, I realize I've written a lot of** _ **Twelfth Night**_ **chapters thus far. And that there really isn't any shopping in this apart from as a point of setting. At least I was doing it at another's behest this time. XD Far from my best work, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of writing. That meant sacrificing some proper Elizabethan diction. Feste said no.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own anything of Shakespeare's. I also don't own that one line I stole from** _ **Garrow's Law**_ **, which you should watch if you haven't done. Great drama.**

The gathered crowd drew her eye first. She'd found that the markets of Illyria were never silent, but on a day so dreary as this, when even the great masts of the moored battleships bowed to the frosted sea-breeze, to see more than the odd bundled fishwife was a rare thing indeed. To see small children, scampering excitedly about the loose circle or perched upon the shoulders of fathers or elder brothers, was rarer still.

But the man at the circle' center took each anachronistic sight in stride: ribbing the men, flirting with the girls and women, laughing with the children as he swung two narrow, braided cords, their ends weighted, wicked, and capped with tin, almost lazily about his body. The movement of them was graceful, but not nearly so captivating as to draw her full attention from the woman who was endeavoring, valiantly, to show off her every egg to its best advantage that "'is Lordship's table might be graced with 'em of only me finest hens."

She did not see him pause, tossing one rope high into the air to bring a hand to his lips and bid the crowd be silent. Did not see the faint spark fly out from his snapped fingers as the thing came twirling down.

The sudden rush of flame drew screams from the audience's weaker-willed; even seeing it in the periphery of her vision as she did, Viola could scarce forbear from jumping. Ignoring the eggseller's indignant squawk, she whipped around, staring wide-eyed as the twin flames, chasing each other in a wild, hypnotic dance, cleaved the midmorning dark.

Hastily she grabbed the dozen the old woman had been boxing the while and paid her gat-toothed young granddaughter, stowing the eggs haphazardly in her basket as she strode towards the circle. All were packed close, as much for warmth as prime viewing, but Viola was small, and nimble- a blessing of her disguised sex- and shrugged unapologetically through what meager gaps there were until she could gaze upon the performer unobstructed. He was neither old nor precisely young, shorter even than herself and very thin. Despite the day's cold he had stripped to the waist- scarlet hose and black boots, the colors of no noble house she'd yet met with in this strange land. Old whip marks marred the skin of his back, and he wore a leather cord about his neck, with a cloudy green stone set in an intricately braided iron pendant. Long, thick curls the dark auburn of autumn acorns had been tied back from his face- a necessarily welcome precaution, she thought, for she feared several times that one blink of the eye or slip of the hand would set the man alight.

Perhaps he sensed her scrutiny, for he winked at her as he called, "I've been at this for a fair while, haven't I?"

"Ay, verily, have you," she replied, of a sudden emboldened by more than her man's garb.

Now the fellow turned to face her fully, a wide smile beginning to steal across his lips. "And how, pray tell, would you know? You've come so new upon your patch of ground you'd cool your heels upon it yet."

There was some laughter at that. "Pushed right past me, he did!" a stout man with lively eyes declared, and those about him jeered, jostled, snickered. Viola only shrugged, unable to keep from smiling despite the slight. She felt strangely at ease with this banter she'd kindled. It was the first such sport she'd had the pleasure of partaking in since her arrival, the Duke her master being too lovelorn for laughter, and his men too familiar with each other, yet too unaccustomed to her to grant her the benefit of aught but plain speech. But the performer and she were strangers to each other, and she enjoyed the boon of anonymity more than she'd had cause to expect.

"If you had only just started, sirrah, you need not have asked such a question at all."

"Clever lad!" he said, chuckling. "'S why they call me fool, see, and not a man who juggles wits as well as fire- speaking of, hold these, will ye?"

Later she would begrudgingly admit to yelping like a dog whose tail had been trod upon when he swallowed the flames and handed her the cords. Thankfully, she was far from the only one. The fool laughed his husky baritone laugh as he made her a genteel bow and sauntered back to the battered wooden box that occupied the open space with him. He pulled several tall iron baskets from within, seven of them, and arranged them in in a circle about himself, whistling a merry tune the while. Seven torches came next- piled comically in his arms, under his chin, atop his head- until he staggered beneath the awkward load. Peals of laughter from all assembled sounded forth when he fell with a great clatter and much tangling of limbs.

"Death of my _arse_ ," he groaned, making Viola snort. He heaved himself to his feet, shaking himself out so that he resembled nothing so much as a man of straw flapping in the wind. "The trouble, I should think," he mused, moving to pick up the torches, "is that I've only two hands to me. So if you'll be so obliging, sir-" handing one torch to a stocky, liveried youth- "sir-" to a father, whose two young sons whooped in delight- "madam-" to the eggseller's granddaughter, having snuck from her formidable mother's side to watch the spectacle- "you'll bear these safely awhile." Holding two torches in one hand and the last two betwixt his legs, he rummaged in his pocket for another match. And came up empty. "Hm." The other pocket, and his boots, were similarly bereft. The crowd's amusement mounted with his aggrievement. "Tullio!"

A small boy who clutched a red cap too large for his own head scrambled to his feet, stood at a soldier's full attention. "Ay, sir?"

"I entrusted thee with a mission of grave import ere we began here, did I not?"

"Ay, sir."

"Pray, tell the good people what that was."

"To take your two matches and grant them as...uh... _asylum_ within your pockets," the child reported proudly.

The fool raised both eyebrows. "So that I might waste no time in fetching them for use?"

"Ay."

"And didst thou do as I asked?"

"I-"

"Say thou 'I' and I do espy some tale of woe in thine eyes; say 'ay' and thou dost lie in thine own throat. For," he said, adopting the low drawl of an exasperated parent, "no matches have I."

Tullio put one hand to his mouth in thought, then pointed to a mongrel pup lying at his feet. "Dove ate it, sir."

The fool, with the torches between his knees still, crouched to glare at the dog, which met his gaze with eyes entirely too wide and innocent. His sharp features slowly contorted into a grotesque mask of betrayal that had the crowd roaring. " _Blast_ your eyes, you damned bitch." So saying, he straightened, and with an irritable toss of his head flipped backwards to his box, pulled a match from it and struck it against the dark wood. "No matter! I mustn't tarry any longer, else I'll have yon plump cabbages lobbed at me head soon enough!" As he spoke, he began juggling the two torches with one hand, eyeing their trajectories with a practiced eye. "Though I would beg a boon of you; that when these catch, you shall give them a good cheer, with force enough to blow them out again. Usher the show in proper!"

"Show's not started yet!" shouted a gruff voice from the back.

"Will do!" he retorted cheerfully. One torch caught with a hiss, garnering a murmur of approval. The second followed suit, and he flung both high into the air. The two in locked legs' embrace he swiftly grabbed and lit, so when their fellows came down he simply juggled them all with as much ease as though he'd been at it for hours.

He was more a master of his art than he made himself out to be. Viola applauded as loudly as anyone as the patterns grew increasingly complex, the torches sailing through the air as though they lived and breathed it, had been born to it, spirits of mirth and merriment. Tullio had produced another match from the box to light the three remaining torches; when the called for them to be thrown at him- when he _caught_ them, keeping up the bizarre weaving pattern while letting neither flames nor manic grain slip, her gasps were drowned among the multitude. She had seen fire-eaters before, of course, in Messaline- Cathay pirates and the occasional roving band of Roma- but none quite so skillful, nor so gleeful, as this.

All seven torches circled higher, faster. The crowd watched with bated breath as the fool leaned back, painfully slowly, until his back was parallel with the ground. Viola flinched when the first torch fell, landing with a ringing _clang_ in one of the baskets. To her astonishment, the rest followed suit, all coming to rest in a ring about the man, now empty-handed. With a triumphant shout, he swung his bent body into a handspring, a flourish, a bow, to deafening applause. His whip-thin body gleamed with sweat, his face was flushed from the lingering heat of the flames, but he smiled brightly as ever as he collected his props. Tullio ran about brandishing cap for coin, giggling a little when it grew heavy. Viola placed a few of her own coins, given her by the ever-gracious and never-lacking-for-funds Orsino, into the boy's hand with a conspiratorial smile.

The bounty was well-earned. Mightily so. Watching the fellow slip into a frayed black and red tunic, chase Tullio down to retrieve the cap, send the boy on his way with a smack on the rump and a brace of crowns, Viola felt, faintly, a sense of kinship with that solitary, roguish figure. They were both anomalies; as she was neither man nor maid, so was he neither man nor lord. They were fools together: she the fool of Fortune, he of his own devising. Here was one with whom she could bandy words, match wits, but where she might have felt desire in her woman's weeds, she now could feel only the pleasant thrum of mingled excitement and admiration. For a fleeting moment she longed to seek him out, tell him so- but the fool was gone, the market subdued and sluggish once more, as though it had never been waylaid, never been enchanted, for too short a time to be remembered.

 **COP-OUT ENDING WHOO**

 **My love of fire performers started when I read, and later watched Cornelia Funke's brilliant** _ **Inkheart**_ **. Dustfinger was one of my many fictional crushes as a child (just go look at some of the oldest fanfics I wrote), and I was especially appreciative of the fire scene in the film (because, uh, who doesn't want to see Paul Bettany shirtless). That scene inspired Feste's costume and the first half of his performance; the fire twirling is called "poi," a performance art originating with the Maori. It's flipping cool, and very difficult to learn (I tried it, years ago, and never dared light the balls on fire because I would consistently whack myself in the groin and head with them).**

 **The juggling was based slightly off of the hilarious performances of fire juggler Rugg Tomcat, although Feste matched the world record for most flaming torches juggled (seven, helf by Anthony Gato). For the record, I'm NOT a juggler (again, tried to learn and failed), so I have no idea if the backbend trick would work. The physics of it seem dodgy, but they DID only stay up for a brief moment. The fool's a professional.**

 **Enjoy? I hope?**


	9. Tapestry of Dreams: Benvolio X Mercutio

**AN: Prompt 9 was "hanging out with friends," so welcome back to my uni production of** _ **Romeo and Juliet**_ **last seen in chapter 4. All appearances, textual edits, and staging choices are taken directly from our interpretation of 1.4, apart from Mercutio's trench coat, which our director didn't let me wear in the show.**

 **A note about design: the Capulet manor is described as "woad" because we split our color scheme into Capulet-blue and Montague-red. Characters not aligned with a house were given in-between colors to wear: Benvolio, for example, was in russet orange, Mercutio in brown and green, the Prince and Paris in full black, etc.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own this or any of the other mentioned plays.**

By day Verona was a city of multitudes: men, women, and children thronging the streets in all their splendor and squalor, noise and tempers riotous, to wax high, wane ill, at inconstant Nature's behest. But the day was three-quarters gone, and all vigor with it, leaving peace as the coming night's sole companion when those multitudes retreated behind locked doors and shutters.

There stood as the final bastion of midsummer merriment but one gentle house: that of Capulet, whose great hall (with its greater oaken doors thrown wide like a gaping maw) disgorged its myriad costumed revelers. They bore every noble name save Montague, but Montague would not rest idly this night. Greater lovers of the galliard than the glaive were the youth of that house; Lord Capulet having neglected to bar maskers from his gates, they fancied the sultry air ripe for their sport. Not Montague alone, but Giarola, Levi, Crispo, Pindemonte, Nogarola, Alighieri- seven merry men and one morose maid donned cape and cowl to cavort gaily through the piazza toward the woad manor.

Mercutio strode at the head of their party as though he'd been born Lord of Misrule, and none contested his right to the place as he jested, gesticulated, bolting away from their company every ten-odd paces to leap upon the numerous overturned crates and high walls littering the piazza, much to the others' amusement. Benvolio, paying less heed to Romeo's mournful sighs and dragging feet than his cousin might have liked, could not tear his eyes from that short, swaggering figure. He was a striking man, though not precisely a handsome one, everything about him dark and strong and just a bit wry. There was a sort of feckless grace to each movement he made, a confidence Benvolio could not help but envy. But then, envy had become a familiar, if unwelcome companion in the two months he had known the Prince's kinsman. It burned deep in his gut when he watched Mercutio charm maid and man alike with his bawdy jibes and mordant wit, seemingly unaware of how easily one could grow besotted with him- unaware, or uncaring, which Benvolio preferred not to consider. He felt it now, like an ember in his throat as the other man threw an arm about Zanobi's narrow shoulders, leaned over to plant a rough kiss upon Emiliano's plump cheek. But when he turned his head to grin wildly at Benvolio, the left side of his mouth curling higher than the right as was its wont, that envy, infected by his energy, his glee, could remain no longer to haunt him, the sting giving way to a pleasant warmth from the one look.

XXX

So lost in thought of feeling was he that he did not much mark how his steps had slowed until Romeo stumbled into him. Pitiful as ever in the throes of love, she merely sighed, something almost akin to contempt shadowing her hazel eyes as she regarded the others' merriment.

"What," she exclaimed, "shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? Or shall we on without apology?"

"The date is out of such prolixity," Benvolio pointed out, resting a hand on his cousin's back even as he tried- with no great degree of success- to curb the twinge of impatience her habitual melancholy wrought. "But let them measure us by what they will; we'll measure them a measure and be gone."

At the dim periphery of his vision, he could see Mercutio loping away from the others, pausing to watch the cousins, head canted in curiosity, expression inscrutable.

"An we mean well in going to this masque," Romeo pressed, trepidation buried beneath the sting of condescension, "but 'tis no wit to go."

"Why, may one ask?" Mercutio hooked both thumbs into the pockets of his black coat as he sauntered forward to nudge Romeo's arm with his shoulder. The smooth lilt of his voice betrayed no hint of the challenge honing fever-bright eyes, daggerlike, to a keen point.

Romeo crossed her arms defensively beneath her bosom. "I dreamt a dream tonight."

A brief upward flicker of thick brows, a faint twitch of that plastic left side of the mouth. Mercutio's sentiments never made themselves plain upon his face with any great fanfare. "And so did I."

"Well, what was yours?"

"That dreamers often lie," he drawled, grinning lazily as the others snickered. Benvolio, as always relegated to the observer's distance when Romeo and Mercutio fell to their battles of wit, simply shook his head in fond exasperation at the folly of his two most beloved.

"In bed asleep, where they do dream things true!" Romeo insisted, with enough fervor to have all but welcomed Mercutio's inevitable mockery.

And mock he did. " _Oh_ , then I see Queen Mab hath been with you!" A vicious smirk stole over his lips. Behind them, Scolaio whistled, low and leering.

"Queen Mab?" Benvolio could not resist asking, permitting himself a private chuckle (and his friends a rather more public variation). "What's she?"

Mercutio turned to face them, stout-ale eyes gleaming as though a candle had been lit behind them. Now those expressive brows were raised fully, the head wagging as if to say _a Philistine, are you, that you know not?_

"She," he said in his showman's voice, grand and dripping irony, promising wonder and terror together in a single breath, "is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in state no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomi o'er mens' noses as they lie asleep."

XXX

Thus he spoke, and spoke, the inexorable tide of words less picturesque stream than flood. The minstrel weaving song from story, the trickster plucking art from artifice to hold them spellbound, bind the threads of his sordid tale into a tapestry of dreams as Mercutio stalked, bowed, danced his untethered way through the flames of his fervid imagination. But Benvolio cared not for spells, nor dreams, but for the man beneath their masks. He wondered if he alone could see the ragged places where that tapestry had begun to unravel: the light in his eyes dying, giving way to something sinister and wary; the pitch of his voice dropping low, dark, grating harshly against fear and madness intertwined. The increasing erraticism of his movements, spending just a moment too long at Romeo's side, on his knees, apart from the rest, hands shaking, body taut as if braced to ward off a blow.

Their ensemble had long since been cowed into silence when Romeo impatiently, desperately bid him hold his peace. _Thou talkst of nothing_ , she said. As though he'd spoken so much, so long, only to spite her; as though she were blind to the way he had lost himself in the words, set adrift in a labyrinth of his own devising with no proffered light to draw him out. Manic energy spent, Mercutio slumped where he stood, like a puppet that had ceased to amuse his master and whose strings, too tightly wound, had been brutally cut.

"True," he murmured, wearily dry. "I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but- vain _fantasy_ , which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who woos even now the frozen bosom of the North and, being angered, puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping South."

He looked so...small. Subdued where he should have been grandiose, solitary where he should have been warmly ensconced within their company. It pained Benvolio to see him so misplaced from himself. For a moment he longed to take the other by the shoulders, coax back his vigor with a gentle embrace- but years of coupling caution and diffidence railed at the thought, bade him stay his roving eyes and roving hands. Keep, _as always_ , the observer's wretched distance. He was not so naive as Romeo, to bandy his affections about where they may have been unwelcome; nor so foolhardy as Mercutio himself, to make them known where law and church conspired to beat them into silence.

So aloof he stayed: ashamed of his own cowardice, hating still more the way Mercutio- unmoving, unmoved- seemed to expect it. "This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves," he said gently, motioning the others onward. "Supper is done, and we shall come too late."

"I fear, too early, for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars," Romeo sighed, but she mourned too little to be marked, walking peaceably enough by when she realized they had all become too inured to her prophesying, speechifying, fatalizing, to heed her grave pronouncements. "But he that hath the steerage of my course direct my sail. On, lusty gentlemen!"

"Strike, drum," Benvolio said, resolutely refusing to look upon Mercutio as he stood still as Death, lost to benighted abstractions, a dreamer weary of his somnolent prison yet unable to free himself from it as he trudged through the shadow of their merriment.

 **About the names: since the Montague and Capulet ensembles remained unnamed with the exception of the first scene's servants (Balthazar, Abraham, Samson, Gregory), I decided to remedy that: Balthazar Giarola, Abraham Levi, Emiliano Crispo, Scolaio Pindemonte, Zanobi Nogarola. And Mercutio Alighieri. Because Dante. I didn't particularly care for the more obvious "Veronesi" and enjoy being gratuitously clever, what can I say.**

 **Incidentally, I did get with my ex-girlfriend during this show. It just wasn't Benvolio. And I'm aware that I tend to write unrequited love or platonic love a LOT, but working off of our production, we just didn't have that kind of relationship between the three of us; it was purely friendship. Most of the show's non-canon flirting came from me, directed at the Nurse, Peter, Tybalt, and my ex, who was in the Montague ensemble (the "Emiliano" character here). XD**

 **Give me your thoughts, an we be friends; good criticism shall restore amends.**


	10. Under the Eyes of God: Cassio X Iago

**AN: Prompt #10 was originally "with animal ears," and I took one look and was like "nah." So I made it a wild card, because I've had pre-canon Iago and Cassio rattling around in my brain for a long while and finally decided to do something about it. This was partly written while I was at work over the summer, and finished before I came back to uni. Finding the time to actually type it up has been a bitch.**

 **The "fort" refers to the Forte di Sant'Andrea, one of Venice's several military arsenals scattered throughout the lagoon (incidentally, another was on Poveglia, one of the notorious haunted islands; I almost set the story there before deciding the symbolism was a bit too heavy-handed).**

 **Dialogue's a bit modern because I was lazy.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own** _ **Othello**_ **.**

A Spaniard and an eagle should not have been so damnably difficult to find.

Michael Cassio, though a young man, was too much a learned man and a gentleman not to think himself just a bit ill-used. As a learned man, he held in high esteem his general ability to divine the answer to any pressing inquiry with alacrity; as a gentleman he was accustomed to, and expectant of, being made to wait upon no man's pleasure but his own. Besides the which, he had assumed his consultancy would afford him some modicum of status upon his arrival to the fort: that he would present himself to the cadets (little more than boys) guarding the gates and be welcomed, or (preferably) brought to the general post-haste to better conduct their business. Not asked who the devil he was, nor told rudely that conscripts should report to the roll office, which was likely unmanned, given that said conscripts were slated to have arrived three days ago, _sir_.

 _Conscript_ , indeed. How dare they.

When he had explained to them, more reasonably than they deserved, that he was the tactician from Castelvecchio whom General Othello had contracted to assist with the planning of the defense of Cyprus, the younger of the two guards had laughed in his face. The elder, despite being unable to fully conceal a smirk, had rapped his counterpart smartly upon the sallet with the hilt of his dirk and confessed to Cassio that the general was occupied; he'd do better to seek out ensign Iago Mendivíl, get himself "sorted proper." _He'll be in the bear pit with Aquila and the grunts,_ he had said, foregoing forbearance and indulging his amusement with a crooked grin. _Can't miss 'em_.

XXX

Having neglected to ask where this so-called "bear pit" actually was, Cassio had resorted to wandering the fort with a look of officiousness, only partially feigned, whilst praying for even the smallest stroke of luck. He dared not ask either the drilling cadets or their glowering officers for assistance, he had been humiliated enough as it was. God's blood, but he was a man of means, a man of the world, not some cowering stripling! He could make his own way. _Would_. Make his own damned way.

After what seemed like hours of searching in the sickening midday heat, he came upon a flight of stairs, not so much carved as crudely hacked into the stone. The air flowing down the drunken spiral, marginally cooler for being sheltered from the overzealous sun, came as much a welcome relief as the thing itself, more apt to be this bear pit than aught else he had encountered afore. Someone was speaking in the space below, too low for individual words to be discerned, but the dull thump of flesh striking packed earth, the whoops and gleeful laughter that followed, were convincing enough to send Cassio tripping down towards the commotion.

A disconcertingly sizable assemblage of shirtless men turned to watch him approach, expressions ranging from bemused to amused to thoroughly unimpressed. New recruits, he assumed; most looked to be of an age with himself or a few years younger, but there was a hardness to their bodies and eyes that made him feel a veritable fop in comparison. The sensation discomfited him tremendously. Casual superiority was so much less taxing to one's sense of self.

In the center of the circular pit, a hulking beast of a man with a cruelly hooked nose heaved himself from the ground, stooped to whisper something to his short, lean companion. The latter, face hidden from Cassio's sight, nodded and clapped the colossus on the shoulder before winding his ungainly way through the ranks. He walked with a curious loping drag, as though his right knee would not bend. As he approached Cassio began to make out, and could scarce forbear from gaping at, the myriad time-whitened scars scoring his sun-browned flesh. Scattered across his arms, torso, back, and two marring the left side of his face- s'blood, but they did draw the eye. So, too, did the eye itself: the keen, cold gray of a mist-shrouded sea, starly pale against the swarthy complexion, the close dark beard, the wild thatch of nut-brown curls. He met Cassio's stare with disarming, almost confrontational frankness, sharp and strong like his blades of features, carved into a face worn beyond its years: a soldier born, bred, tried, and triumphant.

He was not quite a handsome man. But it was plain to Cassio's practiced discernment that he was a proud man- yea, and an honest one, the way the jagged sea-cliffs were honest: neither merciful nor subtle, but dependable unto death. Certainly there could be worse stranger with whom one could entrust one's fate.

"Pair up, lads!" he shouted, smirking a little conspiratorially when the youths scrambled to obey the barked command. Stopping before Cassio with booted feet planted in a fistfighter's wide stance, he raised both brows appraisingly and proffered and square, sword-worn hand. "You look lost."

"Just a bit." He knew full well his answering smile more closely resembled a grimace. How far within his control that was, he couldn't have said. "I arrived some time ago and have been shunted off to find an ensign. Iago…." Of course the man's name escaped him. _Blast_ it all, as he hadn't made enough of an ass of himself this day, Man of the Devil, some such _blasted_ foreign thing with the-

"Mendivíl?"

"Aye."

The man's smirk widened into a crooked grin, and he spread his hands with a bluff sort of congeniality that almost instantly set Cassio at ease. "You're in luck, 's it happens, need look no further." The husky baritone suited him, though Cassio would have been harder pressed than he'd prefer to place his accent. Spanish, no doubt, the name gave him away, but it had been overlaid by traces of other tongues he'd evidently adopted long enough to bear their marks. As though he were more mercenary than a homeland's proud defender. "Though I think I've not been granted the same courtesy's you have, mate, an' told who it is comes seeking me. 'Specially not one so grand 's you. So." Taking Cassio by the shoulder, he gestured sharply with his free hand, an invitation that brooked no argument. "No secrets."

"Michael Cassio." After his native Florentine custom he bowed, kissed the three large fingers of his right hand, touched them briefly to Iago's wrist. "You may have heard the general talk of me of late if you are near to him in counsel." Though there was no reason to suppose a mere ensign would be.

"Ay, ay," Iago said, thick brows drawing close in contemplation. "From Castelvecchio, ay, the...student- nay." He shook his head briskly, huffing out what might have been a laugh or a sigh, or neither, or both. "Something more than that, I'm sure."

"I'm a recent graduate, 'tis no slight to think me a student still," Cassio explained ruefully, wanting (somewhat uncharacteristically) to ease the sudden tension. Embarrassment became the older man ill, but he regained his vigor with admirable alacrity, dipping his head to his chest with a hearty chuckle.

"You're but a boy yet, Master Cassio, and I _mean_ you no slight." Iago jerked his chin back toward the training ground as he motioned for Cassio to follow him up the steps. "So you've a few years on these pups: a few courses, graces. You stand beside them with your rapier or rifle, half the enemy camp no older than you, and any difference you see between yourselves becomes obsolete. Don't matter how much you think you know, how much you've read, or how skilled you think you are. You'll march behind Othello an' myself with his flag same's any other." As he spoke, quiet passion carrying the words despite the noise of the general camp, he led Cassio up hills, steps, battlements, to the watchtower at the mouth of the lagoon, where the lion of Venice flapped feebly in the indolent breeze. From so high a vantage point Sant'Andrea unfolded below them like a child's toy model of war: armored guards pacing the walls, infantrymen with swords and bucklers locked in the endless dance of thrust and parry, men at the embankment repairing ships, men upon the ships loading cannons, artillery ranks drilling aim, fire, retreat, a constantly advancing cycle. The destructive order of it all was humbling, silenced any and all protests his pride could have mustered. Iago set a hand upon the back of his neck, directing his gaze to the banner with a gentleness that seemed fraught, strained, with the strength of that iron grasp, that taut predator's frame. "In the field that flag is your scripture, Master Cassio," he murmured, simple words uttered with the reverence of a prayer. "We are all equals under the eyes of God."

 **Weird...ending?**

 **Two points of clarification. Firstly, Sant'Andrea was far from Venice's only fort in the lagoon, but it was pivotal for its location: right at the mouth of the lagoon. Though it wasn't an active battle fort, it was the first line of defense against unwanted naval intruders, and the first thing potential allies would see sailing in. This meant the seaward side was extraordinarily well fortified, and the other side was basically left to f**k it and flounder. It also acted as a military base, hence its function in the story, although it was more a garrison than an official training ground (those didn't exist at the time). Secondly, if Iago seems less villainous than he should, it's partly because this is pre-canon, but mostly because it's told from Cassio's POV. Cassio who, as we know, was taken in completely by the "honest Iago" persona until the last damn scene in the play, where he (and everyone except Emilia, who was still willing to give her husband the benefit of the doubt for a while) had to have said Iago's deceptions spelled out to him. So...there goes your diabolical plotting.**

 **I love reviews. Have I said that recently? Probably. But I love them nonetheless. ;)**


	11. Puppy Love: Lucentio X Tranio

**Just a little ol' college AU crack chapter for y'all. Enjoy!**

" _...Why_."

"Uh...the light's better over here?"

"That is _not_ what I asked."

"Aw, come on, Tranio, don't you think it's cute?"

"You are wearing adog onesie-"

"It's called a kigurumi, actually-"

" _Dog. Onesie._ "

"..."

"Mind telling me why you just happen to have that thing lying around?"

"They were selling them at that anime convention, you know, last week? And, uh, this _really_ really cute girl I kept seeing, she and her friends saw them and were _freaking_ out, like, _super_ excited-"

"Adorable, yeah."

"You are _so rude_."

" _Thanks_."

"You wanna hear the rest of the story or not, dude?! _As I was saying_ , they were at the booth with these things, and they each bought one and just _put them on_ , right there, and asked the chick selling them to take their picture. And the cute one saw me and just _winked_ , like straight up winked at me, who the heck does that? And she had bought a puppy one, but it was white, it looked _amazing_ on her-"

"Maybe tone down the romance novel hero impression, yeah?"

"Ex- _cuse_ you, I wasn't _done_."

"Yes, you were, you were going to tell me how you bought the onesie-"

"Kigurumi-"  
"Bought the onesie so the two of you could match, and now you're tagging the con in the selfie you're gonna post to your Instagram with the story so you can find her and make sweet puppy love."

"...Did you really just say puppy love."

"That pun was absolutely intended."

"It was _not._ "

"Hey, it was that or nerd love. Or some weird hentai thing. You should be grateful."

"Remind me why we're still roommates?"

"Because you're useless on your own and would come crying back within a day when you inevitably forgot how to work the microwave."

"...I hate you."

"Love you too. Puppy."


	12. One Kiss: Puck X Ariel

**AN: I literally haven't written ANYTHING school-unrelated since the last time I updated this story (which was several months ago); uni kicked my arse. The dream was to get a ton of writing done over break, but I'm a lazy SoB when it comes to creative projects, so I apologize for how late this is. And how bad. I'm very rusty.**

 **Prompt #12 was "making out."**

 _Over hill and over dale; thorough bush, thorough briar; over park, over pale; thorough flood, thorough fire: I do wander everywhere, swifter than the moon's sphere._ So sang Robin Goodfellow as he paced the grassy knoll where once the king was wont to lie in distempered yearning. Now he stayed evermore beside his queen, to remedy what havoc their year's malice had wrought: his rages as tempests lashing stone, sea, and sky; her wicked abandon a drought, a frost, a sickness to ravage the land. But the madness of midwinter loss and midsummer love had come and gone, and there would be no more of strife. Titania danced again to Oberon's murmured melody, and all was made well in fairy land.

All but for the knavish sprite sequestered still in the king's bower, consigned to pacing, pacing, until he was sent for- needed, wanted, he cared not which, the wait alone was a torment. What good was a trickster to anyone when harmony, not discord, was one's intended purpose? Not that he expected the peace to last; his lord was too passionate and his lady too fickle for that, but at present, the wretched present, merry Puck was naught but an afterthought. No more to share Oberon's bed, when nubile Titania could warm him; no more to coax forth and revel in his rare laugh of shattered clay and lion's roar, when he reserved the sound for the pleasure of his queen.

Around him there was only silence. The weight of abandonment pressed heavy on the mists, shrouding pine and frost where Lady Summer dared not tread, which the Winter King, in wait of temperate spring, cast from remembered sight.

XXX

 _Where the bee sucks, there suck I; in a cowslip's bell I lie: there I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly after summer merrily: merrily, merrily shall I live now._ Ariel's song was the summer gale and the winter chill, the howling lament of autumn and the gentle mirth of spring. He flitted unseen and unheard along the world's winds, drunk on the sweet breath of liberty after thirty years' choking confinement. At last he was master of the eternity of his fate: no more to serve, to grovel on his knees in reluctant obeisance, to wear his soul out at another's behest. The sheer joy alone ought to have been intoxicating unto oblivion. Yet no matter how fast, how far he flew, the island haunted him, nipped and caught at the edges of his conscious thought like the half-remembered shadow of a dream.

 _Miranda crawling, climbing, running, swimming; Miranda laughing, sobbing, singing, staring. Prospero, staff in hand, subduing fierce nature to the whims of his mortal magic. Caliban's cowardly stirrings of bestial defiance; Ariel his tormentor, or else a mere spectator, as the creature writhed cramping and boiling upon lichen-scraped stone, barely repentant. Games of chess half abandoned, bowls of food half abandoned; days of servitude, nights of solitude._

 _The ancient pine an unbearable weight upon his formless soul: its sap his blood, a cloying poison; its bark his skin, cracked and rotted where insects had bored through to grow fat off his once-sweet flesh. The tempests he raised, caressing and battering the earth to suit his mood; winds raging, floods carving death into each rocky hollow and wooded rise as his brothers and sisters, mad with grief, struggled to free him. Years of labor blending into an unrelenting sickness as Sycorax poisoned the earth to which she's bound him._

 _The silence of the dark hours before dawn, stretched to strained and sobbing eternity, with none to hear it broken by his screams._

XXX

Not all roads led to Rome. Those that did, however, tended to pay the least heed to any of the myriad oddities passing along them. From south and east, from south and west; from the shadow of the wood, from the whisper of the wind, they met at a crossroads in a torrent of midsummer rain. Eyes of cypress green gazed into blank mirrors pale as quartz; hands clasped, the dusky gold of Mediterranean soil and the bloodless pallor of sea salt and frost; curling hair twined and tangled together, the olive bark's mottled black and brown threading inky darkness through the silver and white of a calm day's cloud. Strangers in these bodies thought they were, they had known each other since the dawn of time: prayed to, cursed, laughed with, laughed at each other through the endless song of wind and rain.

They met so near with their lips that their breaths embraced together, half mad with lust and reveling in every second of shared abandon. One kiss holding all the world's pain and pleasure, a lifetime lived and breathed in a moment's connection. One kiss drowning out the roar of silence, the scream of sorrow plaguing feckless minds and lonely hearts. One kiss mending what liberty had rent asunder. Lips locked, melting into each other, the world fell away to darkness and they healed as one.

 **See, not everything I write is crazy long. This was originally going to be a modern AU, but plans are made to be broken. I wasn't quite anticipating the angst, though. Some small inspiration was taken from Emma Rice's 2016 production of** _ **Dream**_ **at the Globe, which I watched four times over Thanksgiving week just prior to starting this.**


	13. World's Worst Clown: Olivia X Feste

**AN: Prompt 13 was "eating ice cream." I haven't written a child protagonist in...God, years. Basically since I was a child. It was an interesting challenge. Written for Hymlume on Ao3, who requested more Olivia/Feste way back. :)**

The September sun beat down hot on the top of her head, waves of sticky heat lapping against her skin as though she'd run an hour without stopping through a sealed, steam-laden tunnel. Not that she'd ever had occasion to run through a steamy tunnel, or through any tunnel, but she thought that if she had done, it would've felt something like this. She could feel sweat gathering under her armpits, behind her knees, even at the inner corners of her eyes; it had already begun its slow crawl down her skin, which was _disgusting_ , because if it carried on like that it was going to drip into her ice cream. Her _special_ ice cream. A brownie sundae with extra chocolate sauce and a waffle cone on top: all of which was slowly becoming soup, because Daddy and William had _left her_ , and only stupid little girls stood in one spot waiting to get kidnapped when they were thus abandoned.

Olivia was _not_ a stupid little girl. So she kept walking through the fair in trapezoids, rhombuses, ovals, hexagons, and all of the other weird -gons she had learned in school, eyes flitting over countless shoppers' and tourists' heads in search of a tall and short blond one. Eating, looking, and walking all at the same time was hard work. Hot work. Lonely work. But she refused to cry. She was seven and twenty days, which meant she was a Big Girl. And Big Girls never cried.

"Are you lost?" A clown's face loomed behind her, painted laughter contorted in a curious frown. For a moment, a long, terrible moment, every limb in her body and every thought in her head froze.

Choking back a scream, Olivia lobbed the cup of ice cream at the clown's head. He yelped; ducked; threw one arm up to shield his face; stuck the other out to catch the cup. Only when he straightened did she realize just how _small_ he was: barely taller than she was, and skinny like the starving kittens the groundskeeper sometimes found in the rubbish bins behind the mansion. His clothes were several sizes too big, stained a faded brown from dirt and sand; his jeans looked like they had been savaged by a hungry animal, sewn back together in the dark, and savaged again. He wore a top hat so big it covered his eyes, but unruly curls begging for a wash poked out every which way from beneath the brim. Fraying laces flopped over battered black sneakers, trailing their limp, pathetic selves across the dusty ground.

A kid. This _stupid, scary_ clown was just a dumb _kid_. The embarrassment, sidling up her throat and clawing at her tongue, burned.

"You scared me!" Olivia crossed her arms and glared at the boy, willing her lip not to quiver when he said nothing. "And you stole my ice cream! I want it back, meanie, didn't your mommy and daddy ever teach you that stealing is bad?"

"Nope," he said, shrugging. And _taking a bite of her ice cream_. A massive one. "'S good, this."

Olivia stamped her foot, mouth falling open in shock. "You can't do that!"

"Yes I can. You threw it at me, how was I supposed to know you still wanted it?"

"Because it was _mine_?"

"Mine now." Tipping the cup back to drink the remaining ice cream soup, he grinned, bright and wide and twinkle-eyed like the naughty boys in school who pulled pranks and made dirty jokes and silly faces behind the teacher's back. Olivia let her frown deepen, not for a second admitting to herself that his stubborn refusal to be good was just a _little_ funny. "Oi, c'mon, don't give me that. I made forty-two dollars already today, I can buy you a new one. Or I might buy you one anyway." His grin widening, he bowed a little, tipping the top hat like a gentleman in the black-and-white movies her nanny loved to watch. Two small purple balls fell out; he caught them with a faint hum of triumph and began juggling them with his free hand. The gap where his canine tooth should have been seemed to wink at her. "You're very pretty."

This time, the heat in Olivia's cheeks had almost nothing to do with the sun. Daddy had forbidden William from ever talking to a girl the way some of his friends sometimes did, the way this boy was talking to her, threatening to skin him if he caught him at it. If Daddy happened to find her here with this boy, who for all his smallness had to be nearer William's age than her own, he'd surely do worse than skin him. Then he'd drag her away by the ear with a muttered tirade about _the nerve of this estate trash_ and _bloody punks_ and _not my bloody daughter_.

"My daddy will kill you if he catches you saying things like that to me," she said, unable to stop blushing now matter how hard she wished.

The boy's black-ringed eyes grew comically wide. She wondered if he knew how much he looked like a deranged Alice Cooper. "Good thing you lost him, then, I'm too young to die."

Olivia rolled her eyes. "I didn't _lose_ him."

"Then he lost you," he shot back: frowning again, but the seriousness was no more genuine than the fright of moments before. "That's worse."

She tried not to let the words hurt, she did. Big Girls didn't cry, blah blah and bloody blah, but it was just plain _cruel_ of him to remind her of what she no longer had when she'd managed to forget about it for such a blissfully short time. Daddy had to have been looking for her, had to have been sick with worry, but it had been so long; it felt like she'd been wandering through the park for hours, slowly melting beneath the unforgiving autumn sun. Alone. Abandoned. Forgotten. She didn't even have her ice cream anymore, that final link to her family.

Amidst the confusion of her other thoughts, the knowledge that she was about to cry came almost as a relief: the terrible, draining sort of relief that came with throwing up, or falling into bed in the throes of fever. When the ache atop her eyeballs and the pressure in her nose grew too much to bear, she barely had time to turn around before tears were spilling from her eyes: down her cheeks, along her nose, into her mouth, hot and salty and altogether unpleasant.

" _Ohh_ , no," the boy exclaimed, sounding properly panicked. " _No_ , no-no-no-no-no, why are you crying? You're not supposed to cry!"

"You-you made me cry!" Olivia wailed, as indignantly as she could manage while choking on her own breath. "My daddy did _not_ lose me. You take that back right now!"

"It'll be alright, my parents lost me and I turned out fine-"

" _Take. It. Back._ "

"Okay, okay, I take it back, I'm _sorry_." Scowling at the ground, the boy crumpled the ice cream cup into a ball and threw it at the nearest rubbish bin. It hit the side with a dull _clunk_ and bounced off, rolling into the exposed bottom of a fat woman's sandal. Olivia couldn't see that, but the boy could, and he smirked; she briefly contemplated slapping the expression off him, but such violence was beneath her, so everyone told her. The boy stuck his hands into the pockets of his oversized vest, black and embroidered with the town crest like that of every other stall owner, staff member, and entertainer working the fair. He pulled out a shimmery red silk scarf and handed it to her, refusing to meet her eyes. Olivia scrubbed the slippery fabric over her face for a few minutes, silently begging her eyes and nose to stop running before she soaked the pretty thing through and ruined it.

"Thanks," she whispered. Balling the scarf up against her eyes, she caught a few stray tears before handing it back to the boy.

Smiling more softly now, he handed it back. "Keep it, you probably need it more than I do. Besides, then you'll have summat to remember me by. A present from the world's worst clown."

Despite everything, she couldn't keep back a little snorted giggle. "Maybe not the _worst_."

"Close enough."

"You shouldn't sound so proud of that, my daddy says close enough is never good enough."

"Your daddy's a pretty smart guy." The boy curled the spindly fingers of his left hand around his right wrist, twitching rapidly between different positions. Though the crooked smile never left his face, he still wouldn't look at her.

Olivia hugged herself lightly, lightly dragging her nails along her shoulders. Well-trimmed nails, painted the delicate pink of gift shop seashells. Nothing like the boy's, grimy and scratched and bitten to ragged nubs. "Did your parents really lose you?"

The boy just shrugged. "Must've done, I guess. I dunno. Don't remember it."

"That's horrible," she mumbled, biting her lip. She wondered what would be worse: losing a family you knew you had, or losing a family you'd never even had a chance to know, let alone love.

"Hm." The boy sighed heavily through his nose, flung his arms outward like a puppet whose limbs were yanked around by strings. "Their loss. 'S what Hayk says, anyway." The big bright grin was back, but now there was something forced, almost manic in it that made her uneasy. His eyes were empty. Looking into them made her skin crawl and her stomach burn: the feeling of looking into a pitch-black room, trying to find something she'd lost so long ago that she'd forgotten what, exactly, had been lost at all. Questions strung themselves together in her head- _who's Hayk, where did you get your money, why are you a clown, can you help me find my family, what's your name_ \- but she couldn't bring herself to ask any of them. She could only stare at him as her ears filled with the half-forgotten voices of her father and brother, curiosity warring with fear in the heat of shared tension clinging to the last vestiges of summer.

 **Not the ending I'd originally written, but I think I prefer this one. It feels like slightly less of a copout.**

 **Interestingly, I did a great deal of research into the daily income of street performers prior to writing this, and $42 is not at all unreasonable for an event like this, which came as something of a surprise. Little Feste will have a great deal of money on his hands by the end of the day if he keeps at it.**

 **A modern kidfic AU requires some amount of unseen backstory. I enjoyed conceiving a scenario in which these two could plausibly meet outside of their in-play relationship of master-servant, or a cliched school setting. I love talking headcanons if anyone's curious, or has ideas they'd like to share!**


	14. Sonnet 155: Romeo X Juliet

**AN: Prompt 14 was "genderswap," so I decided to flesh out the sonnet exchanged between Romeo and Juliet during the Capulet's party. Once again based off of my uni production because that's where I get all of my Fem!Romeo inspiration from.**

 **I am so out of practice writing it's not even funny, lads. Pray for me.**

The mellow warmth of the azure-crowned day had made a whimpering retreat into the hollows of the world, leaving in its wake a restless wind that soured the chill evening air and tore asunder the clouds striving to mask what few clouds dared cast their twinking eyes upon Verona's streets. Neither the hired musicians' overzealous strumming nor the chatter of a hundred guests could quite drown out the plaintive howling of the midsummer wind.

The maskers tumbled through the doors as if blown by it, whooping and gamboling about like they'd been plucked straight from Carnivale to festoon the Capulet hall. The shortest of them gaily saluted Lord Capulet's welcome, dipped the first woman he could caress with a hand outstretched (Juliet's own nurse, who fairly squawked with indignation) into a rough kiss, and made haste towards Peter and his trays of country liquor. His fellows dispersed, laughing, and Juliet found her eyes inexplicably drawn to the other extreme. Left alone at the door, cloaked in starlight and shadow, the tallest and most slender stood slightly slouched, like the sunflower whose delicate stem could scarce bear the weight of its proud, heavy head. No man was this singular flower, but a maid. In every aspect she resembled fire- the curiously scarlet _arlecchino_ , the silk skirt of dawn's mottled crimson and orange, the auburn curls, elaborately braided, that fell over her shoulders and framed her pert bosom. (Immediately, Juliet flushed, almost ashamed that her mind, young as it yet was, had such audacity as to even silently conjure such a phrase.)

The musicians, having paused to confer and tune, now began a gentle almain, and the whole assemblage paired off to dance. Nurse, Juliet noted with no small amount of glee, had wound up with that delightfully roguish short fellow, and she looked none too pleased with the fact. Juliet cast her eyes about for the masked maiden, but she was curtsying, reluctantly, to Lord Capulet's English trade contact, a monstrously tall, dark fellow whom everyone called Carpio. Her family and the esteemed guests clasped hands with spouses, cousins, close acquaintances; the remaining maskers pulled the servants into the fray, heedless of the thinly veiled stares they received. Which left only the County Paris, whose broad, trembling hand, stiff posture, and imploring brown eyes, mournful as an old hound's, evoked in her naught but pity. The thought cavorting with a man she pitied, never mind marrying him, was a cold cross to bear. But for her father's sake, and for the County's ill-begotten pride, she forced a smile to grace her lips and took the proferred hand.

XXX

She was a rose among thorns, a lily in a field of weeds: a thousand storied superlatives, yet none did justice to that delicate beauty Romeo's suddenly stricken heart yearned to sing its praises to. Perfectly straight hair of summer sunlight's gold fell to her narrow waist, unhindered by meddlesome frippery. A gown of ebony and lavender taffeta, its wide girdle embroidered with twisting threads of green, white, and red, became her ivory complexion capitally. And though she could hardly be called the most graceful dancer in the room, there was still something captivating in the way she tilted her head, the soft candlelight throwing her angular features into stark relief, and the way her hips swayed with even the most restrained movements.

"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" Romeo murmured, the pang of Cupid's arrow so sharp upon her heart that she collapsed against a garlanded column, her eyes irretrievably fixed upon the girl who pulled her wooden partner through the galliard like a back-alley puppeteer.. "It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, as yonder lady o'er her fellows shows. The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand, and, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."

XXX

Extricating herself from the County's solicitous attention seemed a monumental task, so Juliet could scarce forebear from sighing with relief when he disappeared (at her behest) in search of drinks for them both. Stepping back into the shadow of the musicians' balcony, she reached up to smooth a lock of hair behind her ear.

The touch to her free hand sent a shudder down her spine. Whirling about, breath caught in her throat, all planned admonitions died on her lips when she met the greenish-brown cat's eyes of the maiden on whom she'd kept half an eye the whole evening past. The maiden who now, with a blush upon her freckled cheeks, took up Juliet's hand and brought it to her lips.

"If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine," she said, her voice husky and warm, her hands shaking, "the gentle fine is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims ready stand, to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."

Her nearly clumsy earnestness was hardly what Juliet would have expected of a maid who cavorted with men. The effort spent to refrain from grinning outright was nearly painful. "Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm-" and she turned her captive hand over so that their palms did, indeed, touch, gently trailing her thumb along the precious unknown's lips the while- "is holy palmer's kiss."

She drew in an unsteady breath. "Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?"

"Ay, pilgrim," Juliet said archly. "Lips that they must use in prayer."

"O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!" The maid brought one hand up to the lock of hair Juliet had toyed with a moment and a lifetime before, threading her long fingers through it. "They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."

"Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake."

"Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take," she said, thin lips curling into a smirk as she stepped in close: close enough that Juliet's retreating back brushed the smooth, chill marble of the column; close enough that her breath, redolent of candied hazelnuts and port wine, warmed Juliet's cheek. As though she were a statue in a wonder tale, stone set upon by the wind and the rain, nine lifetimes' worth, insensible to the creeping cold of her woebegone fate until true love's kiss could usher life back into her. Their hearts beat in tandem, a stuttering staccato of anticipation poorly hidden. "Thus, from my lips, by yours-" the words whispered against Juliet's lips, the faintest promise of a kiss, yet she burned, near begging for deliverance- "my sin is purged."

"Then have my lips the sin that they have took," she breathed, eyes drifting shut.

"Sin from my lips?" A smothered laugh shook the maid's lanky frame, each vibration its own small caress of Juliet's bosom. "O, trespass sweetly urged, give me my sin again!" And as the great clock struck midnight, their lips fell together, the spark fading to something soft and warm and indescribably _right,_ and the silence of bliss ineffable reigned proud between them.

" _You kiss by the book_."

 **THIS IS WHY I DON'T WRITE ROMANCE. I don't know what I'm doing. XD**

 **The** _ **arlecchino**_ **, or harlequin, is a traditional Carnival mask, typically worn by men. The character is meant to embody emotion without reason, as well as the "noble savage." Generally the mask, with blunt, simian features and a devil's horn upon its brow, was painted black. The emotion bit seemed a better fit for Romeo than most of te other Carnival masks, so I futzed with it a bit. Although further investigation into the history of the mask implied many other things, but by then I didn't feel like changing it.**

 **Apparently in the full text of the play Romeo doesn't dance? We changed that, since the company wasn't that big.**

 **As always, let me know what you liked and what you didn't, what you'd like to see more of, etc!**


	15. A Matter of Principle? Valentin X Curio

**AN: Prompt #15 was "sickfic." I wrote this on a plane, so I was a bit loopy (and took that loopiness out on poor Valentine).**

 **In case anyone can't recall who Valentine and Curio are, they're Orsino's manservants (who tend to double as officers in performance), from** _ **Twelfth Night**_ **. I crackship them because I greatly enjoy minor characters. XD Vaguely Victorian setting because I couldn't be arsed to write Shakespearean dialogue.**

 **The alternate title of this chapter is "Bastard."**

The day began a quarter of an hour late, as most bad days did. Valentine ought not to have been surprised that Curio had kept such diligent track of the time, but time, quite frankly, was the last bloody thing on his mind at that protracted moment of waking. Not that there seemed to be much upon his mind at all. Sense impressions, merely. A prickling heaviness in dully aching limbs, down drifting about his head, a ring of fire lodged deep within his throat. Oppressive heat, all over, as though he'd slept too long beneath a woolen quilt while the summer sun beat down upon his face. A pain in his head, some buggering demon of thought who'd filled his brow with head and was gleefully dancing upon that hateful monument. And Curio's deep, honeyed voice, strangely muffled: whispering, then pleading, then shouting for him to wake up, for Heaven's sake, the alarm had gone off fifteen minutes ago. Sorry, sixteen, now.

"I am doing," he mumbled-or rather, he tried to. His voice shivered and scratched and _shriveled_ , a pitiful thing so unlike his customary commanding tone that he forced his eyes open for the sole purpose of closing them again in embarrassment.

"Are you?" Curio sounded more amused now than concerned, damn him. The smug smile threatening to oust the sobriety from his lips was audible, and Valentine thought he was perfectly justified in not wanting to look at it. So he kept his eyes closed. Purely out of spite, of course, rather than the increasingly clamant desire to return to sleep. Though even in this spiteful humour, he felt rather hard-pressed to refrain from moaning aloud at the nearly blinding pleasure of Curio's cool hand upon his heated brow. "You're ill."

Valentine groaned. "Don't be absurd." Rolling over, away from the solicitous and ashamedly welcome hand, took tremendous effort. Far, far more than such a trivial action warranted. The flattened pillow into which he pressed his face seemed a meagre reward for such an expenditure of effort.

"Your denial is a matter of principle," Curio said, gingerly perching his lanky arse on the edge of the bed. "A matter of principle, which, I needn't remind you, has little bearing on reality. If any at all."

"You're the one who thinks I'm ill, man, who in hell gave you leave to spout logic at me?"

"Get up, then, if you're not ill."

The challenge, thinly veiled behind a veneer of vexingly saccharine placidity, was unmistakable. And Valentine would rue the day he ever balked at a challenged, whether he was ill or not (for within the privacy of his own sorry head, he could admit without compunction that Curio probably was, as he usually was, right).

Item primus. Eyes. ...Eyes. He had opened them mere moments ago, surely he could do it again. Though that was rather a difficult thing to simply _do_ when one's eyelids seemed weighted into immobility. Curio's silent judgement, however, proved a more effective counterweight than his uninspired will could ever hope to be. The left eye opened first into a world of dim white, marred by the fringe of lashes and the blunt shadow of his own nose. Bless Curio, he had kept the drapes and shutters closed. Thus, the buggering coward of a right eye, assured of a relatively painless awakening, followed in the footsteps of its fellow.

Item secundus: arms, which were growing rather too comfortable in their recumbent position by his face. Some joint or other in his neck cracked loudly as he slowly pushed himself up, seal-like, on his hands. Curio, who had since extricated himself from the bedside in favor of standing, half-patiently, by the door, winced in sympathy, but Valentine welcomed any distraction, painful or no, from the way his arms shook.

"Bearing up?" Curio asked, an infuriatingly serene and knowing warmth in his voice.

"Not your job to be clever," Valentine groused, waiting for the lazily tilting world to right itself before daring to move again."

"Oh, it's yours, is it?" Curio leaned his back against the door, raised an eyebrow, delicately adjusted his spectacles. With frankly maddening grace he brought one hand up to his mouth and began chewing on a thumbnail, an uncharacteristic show of indolence. "I'll remember that once you are _standing_."

"Curio-"

"Quick march, now, you've not got all morning."

Bastard. Incorrigible, milk-tempered, utterly heartless _bastard_.

"I know, love, you tell me at least thrice a week. Though 'milk-tempered' is a new one, I must say."

"...Bastard."

" _Up_."

XXX

"Item tertius, was it? Rather long in coming for that."

"You told me to get up. You did not tell me how long I ought to have been about it."

Curio laughed, loping across the room to drape a long arm over Valentine's shoulders. Gently, cheekily, he pressed a kiss to the shorter man's temple, and this time Valentine felt just weary enough, just bereft enough of pride to lean into the embrace. "That I did. And now I tell you that you may return to our bed and sleep to your heart's content. Or until evening, whichever comes first."

Valentine stared at Curio. Curio stared back. Valentine opened his mouth to speak, closed it abruptly. Curio said nothing.

"... _You told me_. _To get up_."

"Yes. And before I put you through that admittedly amusing ordeal, I told the Duke that you would be indisposed until suppertime. I was merely putting your stubbornness to the test."

Head reeling, in both the physical and the metaphorical sense, Valentine collapsed facefirst into his pillow with a growl. "Well, I hope I bloody passed. Bastard."

"Oh, I think so," Curio said airily, bending to kiss him again. Drifting off, he barely felt the warm brush of Curio's chapped lips on his own. "I do think so."

 **Apparently alarm clocks, or precursors to them, date back to the ancient Greeks. Manually reset small clocks that could be used by anyone date back to the 15th century. The more you know!**

 **In the few hours it took to write this fic I came to adore the dynamic between these two. I hope y'all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!**


	16. The Grey Before Dawn: Ros X Guil

**AN: Prompt #16 was "morning rituals," which I HEAVILY futzed with. I decided to expand upon the scene in** _ **Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead**_ **when they're talking about the messenger who sent them on their journey. This chapter was started in an English garden and mostly finished on a plane. Fun times.**

In the grey before dawn, there stood an inn: half-faceless among an uncounted myriad. On the first floor of the inn, in the third room down the unlit corridor, lay two men in a single bed, locked in their mutual orbit by the ease of a thousand nights' practice. The taller of them sprawled, long limbs flopping artlessly about his body as though he'd been dropped from a great height. The shorter lay curled in a tight ball, with his knees drawn to his chest and his bent arms cradling his head. The taller had one foot wedged between his bedfellow's knees, one hand striving to brush his closely cropped hair. All as it had been a thousand nights prior, all as it would be for a thousand nights to come.

Or so they thought.

On this night, the taller, generally called Rosencrantz, had five monstrously itchy bed bug bites on the same leg, while the shorter, generally called Guildenstern, had fallen into bed with a throbbing ache above the eyes that had coalesced into a series of nebulous and melancholy nightmares wrought of the worst excesses of an inordinately philosophical mind. So it was that, on this night, Guildenstern could not be roused, while Rosencrantz could not sleep at all.

Nor could Rosencrantz move to relieve each successive itch: not out of any real fear of waking his friend, but merely in deference to the fact that he _could_ (and under normal circumstances _would_ ). He did, however, curse the creatures he imagined had bitten him: five hungry and conniving brothers called Drumio, Grumio, Frumio, Vrumio, and Theophilus. Frumio, a wee stripling yet, had only just begun his education in the dark art of bed-buggery, and, lacking in courage, had given him but a small bite. Vrumio was the largest and most aggressive, no longer young but no less virile, and bloodthirsty as only a seasoned mercenary could be. And Theophilus, the old pervert, had bitten him so close to his prick that Rosencrantz had to wonder if the poor fool thought that "bed-buggery" meant something else entirely.

Such spirited imaginings occupied his mind for the better part of a quarter hour, but they could not fully keep at bay either the burning itch or faint but omnipresent dread that was night's constant companion. Most children, Rosencrantz reasoned, were at some time or other afraid of the dark, but he felt quite alone in having clung to that fear into adulthood. He couldn't have said why: didn't quite see the point in devoting part of an already taxed mental capacity to dissecting a fear that seemed not existential or thought-driven at all, but merely and wholly animal. Guildenstern, for whom nothing was merely anything, least of all animal, mocked him relentlessly for it, which in a bizarre way came as a great comfort. But Guildenstern could not mock in his sleep-or perhaps he could. It wouldn't come as any great surprise if he could. But _if_ he could, it was not in any way Rosencrantz could understand.

It was a strange thing, being the only man in the room awake at night. Almost worse than being alone.

XXX

In the grey before dawn, the world held its breath. Not peace, but silence fraught with the knowledge that the slightest motion, the faintest sound, could rip apart ts fragile web, woven of starlight and dreams. Silence trembling, fearful, cowering in the shadow of its imminent execution.

 _That man, a foreigner, he woke us up. Pale sky before dawn, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters-shouts-What's all the row about?! Clear off!_

The tattoo of galloping hooves across frost-hardened earth. The rustle of a saddle, the clanking of spurs, the vexed grunting of a man pushing his mount on with far greater urgency than the early hour expected. Shadows hissing as a blade of lantern-light drove them from repose; night birds crying out in alarm. An abrupt, skidding silence, a muffled curse, and, upon the the window behind which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lay, a sudden, merciless beating.

 _Thud. Thud. Thud._

Rosencrantz shot upright. Froze. His breath caught in his throat; his mouth opened as if to speak, but no sound dared escape. Below and beside him, Guildenstern's rasping snores stuttered to a halt.

 _Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

"BLOODY SHUT UP!" Guildenstern roared, without even moving, making Rosencrantz yelp. Guildenstern growled into the sheets, waking into his ubiquitous irritation more easily than he would slip into a favorite coat. "Not even dawn and he's making a racket, must be bloody drunk. Numbskull."

Rosencrantz ran his tongue over his lips, wondered where the words to give voice to his misgivings about the man at the window and his death-knell knocks might lie, wondered why those mosgivings were taunting him at all. "Guil, I think-"

"You think what?" he snapped, still unmoving but for the hand that clenched, white-knuckled, into a fist upon Rosencrantz's thigh.

"I think he comes-"

"Does he now?"

 _But then he called our names._

"You inside!" The man at their window had a voice that ripped harshly from his throat and through the air, a voice that brooked neither argument nor hesitation. Over the pounding of his heart Rosencrantz could just make out the crackling of a scroll being unfolded. "It is herein set down that the citizens Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear before the court of his esteemed majesty, Claudius, King of Denmark, ere the winter's solstice." The citizens thus summoned stared resolutely away from the messenger, into each others' eyes: fear met vexation and cowered before the threat of combat before both subdued themselves into anticipation morose and mute. "Should you fail in this endeavour, your own heads will bear the price."

 _It was urgent-a matter of extreme urgency, a royal summons, his very words-lights in the stable-yard, saddle up and off headlong and hotfoot across the land in breakneck pursuit of our duty-fearful lest we come too late._

 **This might be the weirdest thing I've ever written, and I honestly have no excuse for writing it like this. It just seemed right at the time. XD**


End file.
